When Mum Isn't Home
by Prackspoor
Summary: "This day is a bad jest," Fëanor said. "My sons hate me, a dog the size of a cow ate my Silmarils, and Melkor is probably plundering my workshop as we speak." - Finarfin shrugged. "Well, we are still alive and Melkor hasn't yet destroyed the universe. It could be worse." - "I guess everything counts as a victory if you set the bar low enough," Fingolfin said dryly.
1. Introduction & The Dog Problem

_"This day is a bad jest," Fëanor said. "My wife is gone, my sons hate me, a dog the size of a cow ate my Silmarils, not to mention that Melkor is probably plundering my workshop as we speak." He buried his face in his hands._

 _Finarfin shrugged. "Well, we are still alive and Aman still exists which means Melkor hasn't done anything too bad yet. It could be worse."_

 _"I guess everything counts as a victory if you set the bar low enough," Fingolfin said dryly._

* * *

 **General remarks:** This work has  footnotes. They will be indicated in the next by numbers in parentheses. You can find the respective footnote at the end of each logical paragraph.

* * *

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

o

Fëanor, _an Elven lord of whom we are uncertain whether he can call more kids or bad life decisions his own_

his sons

\- Maedhros, (15) _the eldest, a teenager_

\- Maglor, (12) _not quite a teenager yet, but a composer in the making_

\- Celegorm, (11) _the one son whose hair makes you think about taking a paternity test_

\- Caranthir, (11) _the kid who kept stealing your lunch in the school yard_

\- Curufin, (10) _that other kid who took not only your lunch, but your money and your self-respect_

o

Fingolfin, _another Elven lord who is kind and honourable at all times, except when he is not_

his children

\- Fingon, (15) _the one boy that convinces you that starting firecrackers in a broom cabinet is a great idea_

\- Turgon, (12) _a construction engineer in the making_

\- Aredhel, (11) _the Romp Raider_

o

Finarfin, _a third Elven lord, the Far-Seeing, who would like to remind you that this is a title and not a medical condition_

his children

\- Finrod, (15) _another teenager_

\- Galadriel, (11) _a girl who can See_

o

Nerdanel, _an Elven lady_

Melkor, _a god of questionable intelligence, a Dark Lord, also a community service worker_

Huan, _a dog_

Oromë, _another god_

* * *

 **I. The Dog Problem**

 _In which there are letters, dogs, and unsurprisingly, problems_

* * *

Another day in the Blessed Realm was coming to its end. The lights of the Two Trees was dimming and a gentle, violet dusk was blanketing the Blessed Realm, only lit up by a fireflies rising out of bushes and trees and dancing over meadows, in the forests and in the palace gardens.

Merely in the forge of Tirion the windows were still bright with the yellow sheen of candles. They had been shining brightly for almost a fortnight now, to be exact. If some tourist had happened to spend his holiday here and would have passed by the forge day by day, they would have come to the inevitable conclusion that whoever was holed up in there had either no consideration for fire safety or had died without someone noticing and left the lamps on.

As it was, the Blessed Realm had not yet discovered the perks of having a tourist industry (1) and every local knew enough about the owner of The Forge to give it a wide berth, even when the windows were dark.

It was a solitary building, squat and sturdy and quite at odds with the delicate Elven architecture all around it. From time to time, a red flicker of unholy light could be seen from within, followed mostly but not always by the sound of an arcane explosion followed in turn by a silence that was usually reserved for Outer Space, the Void or the aftermath of a laughing fit at a funeral ceremony.

It was therefore so unusual an occurrence that on this very evening, someone did knock on the door, that the occupant of the forge dismissed it as impossible and did not even pause in his works.

The knock repeated itself.

The forge was hot. Torches were burning low and sputtering, filling the room with more shadow than light under workbenches, between shelves, massive tools…

Merely from the middle of the room emanated a bright, silver light.

A dark, tall shape stood there, standing in the midst of an intricate nexus of silver threads and nodes that spun and webbed all around him, dividing themselves and reconnecting in other places, almost like a network of neurons that was floating mid-air. The threads themselves seemed to be made of flowing silvery water and every now and then when the dark smith touched his hands to a node, an impulsive of blazing light would shoot along the threads branching off from the node and snowball from there to every other node.

The nexus was taller than he was, and he could comfortably take three two steps in every direction before he would touch the threads and every time he did it, the threads would thicken and the link he had touched would be strengthened. The smith had been coaxing and braiding it into a steadily more elaborate shape for the last three weeks. He had started with the corner points of a cube and from there he had put one link here, one bifurcation there, another node there, adhering strictly to the thaumaturgic calculations which were presently covering the huge blackboard on one long wall of the forge. He did this until he had created something that looked like a brain would look if you took everything but the electric impulses away. It also worked like a brain. It was a cage of sorts, keeping thoughts and magic from escaping and instead reflecting it back to you, improved and crystal-clear, allowing you to concentrate better and add more improvements which the nexus would then reflect back, again freed of the cobwebs of distraction and stray thoughts and so on and so on. It was a positive reinforcement cycle, steadily improving its own efficiency.

He was very close to finishing his work and his entire mind was set on the task, keeping the silver network in form. It was was hard. It needed the discipline of a mind whose dream-images did not slip away or become blurred when dragged into reality, but gained an edge in sharpness instead. The mental effort required was comparable to splitting a mountain just by staring at it.

Then the third knock came.

His concentration snapped and a part of the network collapsed in on itself, the fine structures merging, the complexity lost and diluted, the connexions and nodes ripping apart and with a soft splud, a part of the silver nexus landed on the floor in the form of a silver glob.

The smith stared at it.

For a brief moment the temperature in the room dropped below the freezing point, only to rise slowly and steadily up to the point that the air was shimmering with heat. The smith slowly turned and stalked over to the door with long strides, each of his footfalls spelling doom for whoever was standing outside.

 _If it is this thrice-damned Vala again_ , the smith thought, _I will flay him, dismember him and strangle him with his own tongue, in this very order._

His hand was trembling and his eyes were sparking fire when he slid back the three bolts securing the heavy iron door and ripped it open. A gust of cool night air hit him in the face and for a moment he had to blink. When his eyes had adjusted to the normal brightness of dusk outside, he saw the wretch who had knocked standing before him.

It was not the Vala.

* * *

 _(1) And would not do so for another few millennia safe for one militant attempt by a mad king and his army to spend a week at the beach there, which sadly ended with them being buried under rocks by a god for all their trouble, but that is another story. The general attitude of Valinorians towards foreigners was that they were perfectly fine with them, as long as they stayed where they were and kept quiet about the misery of being born in the wrong country and without immortality. That's not to say that the Blessed Peoples were intolerant of strangers, it was just that their tolerance for foreigners grew exponentially with every thousand miles that lay between them._

* * *

Like every other one of his talents, Fëanor Curufinwë had honed his antisocial behaviour to perfection.

Contrary to his other talents, however, he had not worked towards this consciously. It was not that he prized his vague disregard of other people as a particularly great achievement, it was just that it was a side effect of being a lot smarter than everyone he knew. His everyday business was entirely comprised of matters so complex few others could ever hope to understand. They were taking up even his entire brain capacity at times, and that meant it was out of the question to make anybody else understand them. This again, was not arrogance, this was the truth. The place on the summit of creation was a lonely one. Thankfully, Fëanor wasn't bothered by loneliness. He had a passion and his passion was his work, and into it he poured his cleverness, his ingenuity and his will to push back the boundaries of the possible again and again.

And so, because he attributed little importance to anything else but his work and because his experiments and creations were taking up so much space in his head, other less important matters were inevitably pushed out of his brain and he forgot about them.

Most of the time he forgot to sleep or to eat. Other times he remembered too late that an experimental outcome was supposed to be impossible, but by that time he had already done it. Currently he was faintly surprised to remember that he had a wife and that she had written a letter to him.

Fëanor sat down with the roll of parchment the frightened elf had shoved into his hand before making a run for it and stared at it. It read:

 _To my beloved husband, the Flame of my Heart, the Fire of my Soul_

 _You have been gone for a fortnight now and though I dare not presume what marvel you are working on, I think it might be in order to remind you that you have a home where you can eat, drink and rest. I cannot fathom your workbenches are comfortable enough to sleep on; I know for a fact that my own are not._

 _I am writing to you this letter, because I am in a hurry to leave and cannot pass by your forge before I go. Irindë will deliver it to you in my stead. Do try not to scare her like you did four years ago at your brother's birthday feast. I also need to ask you to return home tonight. You know that I do not interrupt your work lightly, but the palace will be empty due to every Elf being invited to the Festival of Light of Lord Manwë and no one will be there to look out for our children._

Fëanor, his mind still tangled up in the haze of his work-frenzy, filed away the information that he had obviously produced some offspring and read on.

 _I know that it would be unbearable for you to leave your sons alone and thus I thank you already for making haste to return home as soon as you have finished this letter as you will no doubt do. I know that it would pain your heart too much to dawdle a second longer than necessary and therefore remain assured I need not fear for my beloved little ones after I am gone, for a father as caring and kind as you would not waste one second to spend with his family._

 _Yours eternally,_

 _Your Faithful Wife_

Fëanor's eyes dropped to the postscript:

 _PS: Just kidding. Since I know you would rather watch a crystal grow in a cave over a million years than actually take responsibility as a father, I felt I had to add some incentive for you to return home. To cut a long story short, I have given the twins your Silmarils to play with and told Maglor to bring them to Melkor's den if you do not show up before the Dimming of the Trees._

 _Love,_

 _Nerdanel_

Fëanor chose to react in accordance with the gravity of the revelation, and fell out of his chair.

Moments later he was on his feet again. His first instinct was to grab his sword and cut something down, but then he halted himself.

He looked at the letter again.

He wondered if he could get a divorce. Then the stunted emotional part in his brain caught up with his temper and reminded him that he loved his wife and that he would never do that.

He read the letter again, briefly thinking, _She did not say when she is coming back_ , then read the postscript and decided that there were more pressing matters he had to think about.

Fëanor had spent a lot of time developing an Anti-Melkor-theft-and-burglary-system. (2) He usually spent half an hour to make sure everything was activated correctly, that the baits were laid out and the traps hidden well enough. Today, he did it in five minutes. As an afterthought, he patched up the nexus as fast as he could, angry at the makeshift, overhastened and clumsy nature of his repair, but if he left it alone with a gap it might become unstable and break down entirely in his absence.

He was caught in an exceptional quandary. His most prized jewels were currently probably in the hands (or mouths) of his youngest sons and there was a not-so-unreal possibility that Nerdanel had really told Maglor to bring them to Melkor in case he should not come. On the other hand, he hardly left his works unattended, especially not at a critical stage like now, where every disruption or theft could set him back months or years. And that Melkor would not let an opportunity like an abandoned workshop go to waste was virtually certain.

He looked out of a soot-stained window. It was nearly dark.

It was not as if he had a choice.

Fëanor bolted the door, turned the key in thirteen locks and then ran and leapt up white stairs, roads and terraces hat led him up the hill where the palace of Tirion lay. The white city and the mountains of the Pelóri were burning in orange flame, set alight by the intermingled light of Telperion and Laurelin.

* * *

 _(2) This might require some explanation. To all inhabitants of Tirion, it was common knowledge that the Prince of the Noldor and Melkor entertained what can best be described as the most fruitful mutual exploit loop any rich man and his burglar had had up to this date. Every week Melkor tried to break into Fëanor's workshop at least once, which made Fëanor rack up an impressive number of defences to guard his unfinished treasures, which in turn led Melkor to devise even slyer schemes to steal Fëanor's stuff, which made Fëanor come up with more and more advanced methods to fend him off. In the end, just by thwarting each other time and time again, both had become the greatest masters their respective trades had ever seen. Those events became so popular that a group of writers decided to make a weekly comic strip of it. To evade both Fëanor's and Melkor's wrath, they turned the protagonists into animals, renamed them Scrooge McDuck and Blackheart Beagle and sold them under false pen names. Still, the allusion was clear to anyone with half a brain and those "duck tales" were all the rage for centuries afterwards._

* * *

Nerdanel had not been wrong when she had said that the palace would be empty. He encountered no one while he hasted through the gardens. As always, Fëanor avoided the main complex of the castle where his stepmother and his half-siblings lived and instead headed for the slightly isolated side wing where Nerdanel and he had set up their camps. There was no one in the entrance hall when he flung open the doors and burst inside.

"Maglor!" he shouted into the candle-lit white hall and his echo called back at him.

A young elf rounded the corner behind the winged double staircase, obviously lost in a flimsy little book that showed more pictures than text which, in Fëanor's opinion, already disqualified it for any other purpose than serving as kindling. He was lanky and tall, with the awkward gait of an adolescent who did not quite know how to deal with limbs that were about a foot longer than they used to be a year ago, and his head was covered in a wild mess of auburn hair.

"You're not Maglor." Fëanor stared down at the boy—his son.

The boy looked up, looked like he was about to suppress a sigh or shake his head, said, "No, I am not" and then lowered his eyes back to the book and wanted to walk past him, but Fëanor stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Where is he, then?"

Maedhros shrugged. "Dunno, probably still upstairs in the music room, composing his requiem."

"Composing his— _what now_?" Fëanor usually hated to ask questions—it made other people think he had not understood something—but this question exited his mouth before he had the chance to roll it over for a second time. "Is he ill?"

"No. He's just morbid like that sometimes." He paused and looked at his father through narrowed eyes. "Which of course, my Lord Father would know if he deigned to come home more often than once a month."

Fëanor threw him a disgruntled glare, then hurried up the winged staircase, turned left and down a carpeted corridor until he heard the soft sound of a harp playing which was abruptly cut off with a horrible wrong note. Fëanor burst into the room with a speed that made the door hit the wall with a crack.

Inside was a younger elf, dark-haired and with a serious face and a harp in his hands—a harp which he abruptly dropped. Fëanor thought he was shocked, but suddenly the young elf slammed into him with a joyful cry of "Dad, you're home!" and hugged his waist.

Fëanor made a grimace and plucked him off his legs by the scruff of his neck. "Maglor, where are the Silmarils?"

The boy's face fell. "Aren't you gonna ask me how I am?"

"How are you?"

"I'm fine, I was just composing the—"

"Good. Where are the Silmarils?"

Maglor's brilliant smile faltered and he looked up at Fëanor with an unreadable expression. "I don't have them."

"Your mother told me she had tasked you with … keeping them after sundown."

Maglor looked away. "Yeah," he said dully. "Probably. I forgot. I think Curufin wanted to have them, for whatever reason."

Fëanor turned on his heel and strode out again.

Maglor ran after him. "Dad, are you going to stay at home with us? Mum said we were on our own for the evening and she said you'd stay, maybe a bit longer this time!" He was breathless when he had caught up to him.

Fëanor did not answer. He stopped at the landing of the stairs. "Where is Curufin?" he asked, without looking at his son.

"Downstairs, in the living room, where—"

Fëanor took off before he could finish.

* * *

The fireplace room was by far one of the most comfortable rooms in the palace, if you valued cosy furniture, a calm atmosphere and were content to watch the flames crackle in winter, all of which did not apply to Fëanor.

Still, the room was pretty popular with the rest of the family. When Fëanor entered the first person he saw was Maedhros, slouched in a squashy armchair with a vaguely amused smirk. Perched on the armrest of another armchair was another black-haired boy with a sour expression, while another dark one and a blond were rolling over the carpet in a fist fight, lazily watched by their siblings and a … dog?

"You're gonna pay for this! If he gets sick because of you I will—I will," the blond boy yelled and tried in vain to land a punch on his brother who in turn avenged it by biting straight into the blond's other hand.

Maedhros cleared his throat and when the younger boys did not react, he stood, walked over to them and tried to pluck his dark-haired brother off the blond boy. "Curvo, Turko, kip up. Father is here."

The dark-haired boy stopped trying to chew his brother's fingers off and looked up. "Dad!"

Fëanor did not heed him and instead let his eyes sweep the room. No jewels. No silver sheen. "Where are the Silmarils?"

Maglor appeared at his side again. "Curvo had then, I told you."

Fëanor wondered what he had done to deserve having his wife turning on him and handing his most valuable possessions to their children as toys. Also, why was there a dog in his house?

"Yeah," the black-haired boy said with a wicked glint in his eye, despite the fact that he was still dangling in Maedhros' arms. "Had them." His expression was more than slightly devilish and reminded Fëanor uncomfortably of himself when he had been younger.

"What does that mean?" Fëanor asked. "Who has them now?"

The look the five boys shared did not bode well.

"Who?" Fëanor repeated, his voice low and dangerous.

Maedhros was still trying to fight the barely controlled grin that was threatening to split his face from ear to ear and losing. Finally, the blond boy got to his feet and faced his darker brother.

"You go on and tell him, Curufin, it was your idea after all."

Curufin threw his brother a glare which, again, reminded Fëanor a lot of himself whenever someone crossed him. "Celegorm, you are—"

"Tell him. And Dad, just so you know, if Huan dies, it's Curufin's fault too," Celegorm added.

Fëanor gritted his teeth. He was coming to the end of his patience and he was coming there quickly. "Stop. Silence. Answer my question. Where are the Silmarils?"

Curufin did not answer immediately and at last the Celegorm snarled, "Huan has them."

"Who is Huan?"

There was an awkward silence when five boys pointed five fingers simultaneously at the dog who was sitting on the carpet and wagging its tail.

Fëanor drew in a breath. He let it out again. He breathed in again. Then he said, in a voice so quiet it was almost inaudible, "What do you mean by _the dog has them_?"

Celegorm rose to his feet and stood as dignified as he could. "Well, I was in the kennels to clean out Huan's shed and Huan was waiting inside and he was hungry and Curufin thought it would be funny to feed him stupid things, because Huan eats _everything_ , last time he even ate the old shoe Curufin gave him, and I was playing in here with Huan and Curufin must've seen the Silmarils and I bet he thought he was being so _funny_ and he took the jewels and he gave it to Huan und Huan ate them and now he might _die_ because of it and if he does I'm _gonna kill you, Curufin—stop laughing_!" He said all this without stopping to take a breath even once.

Fëanor just stood there, his hands at his sides, Maglor still peering around his legs, and stared at nothing in particular, while Curufin's snickers were the only sound in the room.

"You fed my Silmarils to the dog," he said into the silence, his voice flat. "Well. Then there is only one possibility of retrieving them. Curufin, go into the kitchens and bring me the knife. The big one."

It took the children about two seconds to process what had been said and then Celegorm turned as pale as a sheet. "Dad! No! You can't!" He threw himself between Huan and Fëanor as if that would have been enough to stop his father.

"Maybe a serious enough consequence will teach you not to do something like that in the future," Fëanor said. "Curufin—"

He was interrupted by a shout that seemed to be not of this world. It was so loud, so high and brutal, it was the acoustic equivalent of a jagged knife shredding his eardrums.

"HUAN RUN!", yelled Celegorm.

The other boys cringed and covered their ears, but the dog jumped to his feet. Although Fëanor had guessed it was a pup, he had not guessed it would be the size of a small cow when standing—a small cow which was currently charging right at him.

Still, this dog – whatever his size was – still had his Silmarils and Fëanor would be dead before he allowed it to get past him and through that doorway. Years of trying to keep Melkor out of his hair had left him with an almost unnatural set of reflexes and a fearsome possessiveness where his own belongings were concerned.

Huan leapt and Fëanor moved to meet him. Unfortunately though, Huan was not only as big as a small cow, but also about the same weight.

Fëanor might have been a genius who was rumoured to be able to coax the hidden elements of the world into unforeseen shapes, but not even he could temporarily suspend the basic laws of conservation of momentum. The dog slammed into him with the force of a hammer. He felt himself loose his footing, then a hit to the head and then nothing more.

* * *

When he came to he was seeing colours that were not of this world and which only slowly reformed themselves to blotches that were intermittently brightened by flaring white dots. He also had a splitting headache.

"You know I always knew that you were the most bullheaded elf to ever live," someone said, "but I thought that not even you would try to get through a wall _literally_ head-first."

"Wha—who are you?" Fëanor blinked and slowly the picture came back into focus. He was staring at a wooden ceiling and a face he vaguely felt he should know. It was regal, handsome and framed by dark hair, with a wry smirk on his lips. Fëanor blinked again, then his face resettled into his usual scowl when he recognised the elf leaning over him.

"What are you doing here?" Fëanor asked and shot upright into a sitting position which would have resulted in butting his head against Fingolfin's if his half-brother had not drawn back fast enough. He was still sitting on the floor under the door frame. His head was pounding, but still he managed to add, "This is my home! Why are you here? Who let you in?"

Fingolfin raised an eyebrow. "I am here because I was asked to come and don't flatter yourself by thinking I would have done so without a good reason. As for who let me in, it was Maglor who also came running to me and asked me for help, because his father had just threatened to slaughter the family dog, tried to tackle it and subsequently face-planted into a wall and blacked out. The boy was a tad bit worried to say the least."

Fëanor grimaced. "I did not jump into a wall, the dog just ran me over—"

"Fëanáro, I think you are missing the point here. Did you _really_ threaten to kill the dog?"

Fëanor stared up at him. "And what if I did?"

"Then you would have a lot of explaining to do, brother," another voice said and a tall blond elf appeared behind Fingolfin, his usually kind eyes stern when he looked down at Fëanor.

"Finarfin," Fëanor growled. "I don't recall inviting you. How did you get in here?"

"Through the front door. But, again, that is not the point. The point is—"

Fëanor suddenly remembered why he needed to get the mongrel in the first place. He jumped to his feet although the ground seemed to tilt left and right under his feet. "The dog! The damned dog has my Silmarils!" He wanted to shoulder past his half-brothers, but they moved as one and each of them threw one shoulder against one of his and shoved him back into the living room.

Stumbling he came to a halt, regaining his balance. Both of his half-brothers were blocking the door. For a moment, Fëanor was too outraged to even speak. That those … those … half-bred sons of a fake queen would dare to lay their hands on him, in his own house!

"Careful," he warned. "You are overstepping your boundaries."

Both brothers stepped into the room, moving outward in a half-circle and Fëanor tried to keep them both in his line of sight. Uncomfortably, he noticed it was not working.

They stopped when both had completed the half circle, one standing to his left, the other to his right.

"Brother—"

"Don't call me that," he snarled, his head turned to Fingolfin.

" _Brother_ ," Fingolfin repeated with deliberate emphasis. "We know you do not like us and frankly, I think I can speak for both of us when I say the sentiment is mutual. We were content to leave you be and be left alone in return. But we wanted to talk to you for a long time now and today unfortunately provided a more than suited cause to do it immediately."

"We have been watching for years now," Finarfin said.

"Watching what? Who?" Fëanor turned his head, his voice low and dangerous.

"You, brother," Finarfin said quietly. "And I think we might have watched and done nothing for too long."

"What are you talking about?" Fëanor said.

"The Silmarils," Finarfin said, avoiding his glance.

Fëanor bristled and if he had been a dog, he would have raised his hackles. "What do you want with them? They are mine, I made them—"

"Save your breath," Fingolfin snarled. "We don't want your trinkets. We told you that when you first made them and this hasn't changed. But we have been observing you and noticed some changes in you. In the beginning we dismissed them as your usual foul moods and obnoxious behaviour, but there was a point where we realised we could not explain it all away by you being a pompous, impolite and self-centred bastard."

"So?" Fëanor raised an eyebrow, refusing to be impressed by this childish listing of his supposed shortcomings.

"We hadn't thought it possible," Fingolfin continued, "but you became even more impolite and self-centred. Also your disagreeable temper worsened even more. But that was when Finarfin noticed there was a pattern to it."

Fëanor turned to look from Fingolfin to Finarfin. He'd always held his quiet half-brother in higher regard than the rest of his siblings, but he was not surprised to find that they'd both use the first opportunity to gang up on him and stab him in the back. They were of one kind, after all, and he was not.

"You should expand your nicknames from Far-Seer, to Pattern-Spotter," Fëanor scoffed. "I'm sure the house of Indis will be happy to add another useless _epessë_ to the long bland strings of unimpressive titles it sports whenever it is introduced at formal meetings."

Fingolfin made a growling sound, but Finarfin's face did not change.

"You are your own evidence, Fëanor. Just look at you, listen to yourself," he said quietly. "It wasn't us who frightened Irindë out of her mind and threatened her with a knife when she entered your workshop without knocking, it was not us who wanted to kill Huan, it was not us who scared your children into getting their uncles for help. And did you notice? It always happens when the Silmarils are involved."

"Leave the Silmarils out of this," Fëanor snarled, his fists clenching and unclenching.

"See?" Finarfin asked sadly. "Would that I could, but I cannot leave them out. They are the crux of the matter. You have allowed them to get to you, brother, they occupy your mind day and night and more so than your family does, I dare say. You have been getting distrustful, petty and ill-tempered. Whenever someone mentions the jewels, your first reaction is always accusing them of wanting to take away what is yours. They are powerful, Fëanáro. Beautiful, but powerful and _dangerous_."

Fëanor opened his mouth to say something, but Finarfin held up his hand. "I am not telling you this to spite you, brother. I am worried for you. I do not know what has happened to you, but there is something going on with you and it is not good. It is almost as if those Silmarils have taken a hold of you. Those jewels are getting to your head. It is almost as if they are possessing a part of you that is growing bigger with every day that passes."

"Oh so you are saying they are bad for me?" Fëanor mocked. "I guess I should let go of them then? And who would you propose I give them to for keeping? Let me guess: To you?"

Finarfin shook his head and Fingolfin circled them until he was standing next to his brother. "Tell me, Fëanáro, are you just pretending or are you actually blind to what is happening around us?"

"You are losing them," Finarfin said sadly.

"I _have lost_ them," Fëanor cut it. "They are currently somewhere in the stomach of a mongrel I don't recall allowing into my house.

"I am not talking about the Silmarils," Finarfin said sharply. "Although it was clear that you would think so. All of your thoughts are about them and circle back to them! I was right."

"Then what are you talking about?" Fëanor snapped. He was getting tired of speaking in riddles and the conversation was going in circles as far as he was concerned.

Finarfin regarded him with a long, weighty look that somehow dampened Fëanor's anger and made him feel genuinely uncomfortable and self-conscious, as if he'd been caught doing something and it was only just beginning to dawn on him that it might have been a bad thing to do.

"Not 'what'. _Who_." Finarfin stepped closer. "Did you really not see it? Have you become so blind?"

"What should I have seen?" Fëanor asked, but he could not hinder the rising dread curling in his stomach when he met Finarfin's eyes that were grey like his own, but with infinitely less fire and yet somehow still warmer than Fëanor's own would ever be.

"You are losing them. Your family. _Your sons_."

A pause.

A long pause.

Fëanor reeled back. "Nonsense. I would not – they are the most important thing to me."

"Are they now?" Fingolfin raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever wondered why you stopped hearing complaints from your children about how you are never home and why they are clinging to you every time you come home instead?"

"Because I love them and they love me," Fëanor growled.

Fingolfin laughed humourlessly. "Grand illusions! You should have taken Olórin as your guardian! His realms are, I believe, dreams and mirages. But you were always fond of facts, so I will give you facts, Fëanáro. I will tell you why: They have given it up as a lost cause and they don't want to spent what precious little time they have with their father nagging at him which will only drive him back to his workshop faster."

Fingolfin started to circle him. "You claim you love them, but then do explain to me: Why do you spent weeks on end cooped up in your workshop while your eldest son takes care of his brothers? Maedhros has not visited my home for three months now and whenever Fingon asked him why he said he was too busy helping his mother taking care of his siblings. He is a _child_ , yet he has taken on all the responsibilities _you_ have abandoned. Maglor's only company are his instruments for most days. Curufin and Celegorm are stumbling over their own feet trying to imitate you, but why that idolatry? Because they love your or because it is their way of replacing you? I know what I believe to be true and Finarfin agrees with me." Fingolfin stepped forward. "Did you honestly think you were a good father all this time? Did you honestly not see how lonely your sons were, growing up without you at their side, to encourage them and teach them the things a father should teach them instead of a mother, or leaving them entirely to their own devices?"

Fëanor opened his mouth and closed it again. He wanted to say something, but truly, there was nothing to say. Dreadful truth rang through Fingolfin's words and he knew he could not refute them. For the first time he could remember, he was at a loss for words. All those years passed in fast-forward motion before his inner eye. Memories resurfaced which he did not know he even had and all of them were painted in a different, cold light after what Fingolfin had said.

Maglor asking him to listen to a music piece he'd composed and falling silent, falling out of step and stopping in a long hallway when Fëanor told him he did not have the time.

 _Some other time_ , he had said.

No complaints, never.

Celegorm begging him for a pet time and time again and being refused.

 _Maybe later_ , he had said.

Curufin's eagerness to learn the work in the forge and Fëanor's own impatience because although he loved giving his knowledge to his son, Curufin's incessant questions were too much for him now that he was working on a refined version of a candelabrum, trying to catch the light in the diamonds like he'd done with the Silmarils long ago…

 _Stop the blabbering, I need to concentrate. Sit back there and do not touch anything, I will come to you after I am done._

It had taken him all night to finish his work and when he looked up afterwards the barrel his son had been sitting on had been abandoned.

Fëanor opened his mouth, unsure of what would come out when he did. "I did not … I never wanted to hurt them. I did not realise."

Finarfin looked sad, but Fingolfin was not so even-tempered.

"What a pity," he said and there was a cruel edge to his tone. "I thought you of all people must know how it is to grow up with one parent only."

Fëanor took a step backwards as if he had been punched. His knees hit the edge of an armchair and he collapsed into it, his mouth open, but no words were coming out. For a moment he didn't say anything, he just looked at his hands and wondered why he suddenly for all his successes felt like an utter failure.

"What have I done?"

Finarfin approached quietly and laid a hand on his shoulder. "It was not you, it was the Silmarils. You poured too much of yourself into them and—"

Fëanor stiffened under his touch.

"That's where we differ," Fingolfin drawled. "I think it was to a great part due to you being yourself, but I can't deny it has been getting worse since you made those damned jewels."

Fëanor resisted the urge to defend them that arose within him almost automatically and the notion gave him pause. What if his half-brothers were indeed right on this account, no matter how ridiculous it might seem?

"But being the good brothers we are and you never deserved," Fingolfin continued, his tone suddenly much lighter, "we have already taken appropriate measures to right this wrong. You can thank us later."

Fëanor lifted his gaze and all at once the resentment and the suspicion was back. "What kind of measures?" he asked slowly.

"Simple," Fingolfin said extending his arms in a sweeping gesture. "We both agree that you should have a chance to prove that you are capable of being the father your children deserve. Therefore we thought to make good use of the evening today and spend it together."

"Together?" Fëanor said and made a face as if he was reminded of something particularly disgusting, like biting Melkor's foot three years ago during the Yule Tide Festival. (3) (4)

"Yes. You, us, our children." Fingolfin smirked and in that moment Fëanor wondered why he was considered to be the evil one of the family. "You can try your hand at being a father, we can keep an eye on you so you don't accidentally murder someone in the process and for our own amusement of course, and the children get to see each other again. Everyone is happy."

Fëanor did not say anything.

"And afterwards, after you have proven that you do indeed care for your children we will give you back your Silmarils, and the problem of them being eaten by the Huan should have solved itself in the meantime."

"What? You have them?" Fëanor jumped up. "And you are hiding them from me? Thiefs!"

"No, we don't," Finarfin said. "Huan has them and even we do not know where he is right now. But he has assured us he has every intention of giving them back to you. Before he comes back and does so, however, he wants you to make good on your word that you love your children. It should be a small sacrifice to forgo your Silmarils for one night and spend it with your sons instead."

"Wait, are you saying the _dog_ told you this?"

"More or less," Finarfin said.

"Now you're just messing with me."

"It seems the Silmarils had a weird side-effect. He seems sentient now. And he talks."

"The dog talks." Fëanor couldn't even be bothered to change the inclination of his voice anymore. "It ate my Silmarils and now it talks. And it is _blackmailing_ me."

"These things happen." Fingolfin shrugged.

"You have been working long and hard on making this sound as inane as possible, right?"

"Well, we would have had to if it weren't true, since we don't have your natural talent for spouting nonsense," Fingolfin said.

"What he means to say and what's important," Finarfin cut in, throwing his brother a quick look, "is that it is true as we told you. Huan refuses to come back before your sons himself can honestly tell him that they are happy."

Fëanor ground his teeth so hard his jaw hurt. The indignation about being robbed of his greatest creation by a _dog_ was warring with the horror of the realisation that he might be indeed losing his sons – and having been oblivious about it until today.

"Fine," he ground out at last. "Under one condition."

"Yes?" Both half-brothers were looking at him, vaguely amused.

"No board games."

"Fine."

There was a brief silence.

"So, where are the kids?" That was Fëanor, mentally rolling up his sleeves in preparation to tackle the task of being a good father.

More silence.

"I could have sworn they were out in the hall a moment ago." That was Fingolfin. "Finarfin?"

"I can't see them."

"Whatever for do they call you the Far-Sighted?" A sigh.

"Far-Seeing!" Finarfin said.

"Whatever. Let's go find them."

* * *

 _(3) It makes sense in context._

 _(4) On a second thought, no, it doesn't._

* * *

 **Next chapter:** In which the kids and a secret hideout are introduced, there are quarrels (of course) and Galadriel makes a scary discovery.


	2. Nightfall

Thanks to chisscientist and Kondoru for their reviews!

Kondoru: Yeah, he loves his Silmarils in an almost unhealthy fashion. I did not look up whether the Silmarils were listed in the character selection of this fandom, but I seriously considered tagging the story with the pairing [Fëanor/Silmarils], so that's that.

* * *

 **II. Nightfall**

 _In which the kids and a secret hideout are introduced, there are quarrels (of course) and Galadriel makes a scary discovery._

* * *

The upside to being a Son of Fëanor was that you had lots to time to yourself during which the only thing limiting your fun was your own brain and your imagination. Children have quite a bit of the former and an abundance of the other, and Fëanor's sons had more of both than most.

The downside to being a Son of Fëanor was that you had lots of time to yourself during which the only thing to entertain yourself with was your own brain and there was a limit to the patience and ability of a boy to fend boredom of all by himself. Thus it was only natural that as soon as Fingolfin and Finarfin had proposed to bring their cousins here for one evening, the seven Fëanorions had agreed eagerly at first, hopeful to meet new playmates.

Unfortunately, the long years spent in the distant shadow of their father who wished to keep them isolated from the rest of the house of Finwë had bred an unhealthy sense of superiority on most of them and when their cousins arrived at last, the boys eyed them more like especially exotic animals than as members of their own kin.

After a haughty introduction – because most of them hadn't seen each other for years and some of the younger ones had never met at all – the sons of Fëanor and the children of Fingolfin and Finarfin had already established a healthy distrust quite in line with their fathers. Since children will jump on prejudice like a cat might on a mouse, after five minutes of staring each other down all three groups of children were convinced that everything their fathers had told them about their uncles was absolutely true, which meant that the Fëanorions were arrogant, the Fingolfions were obnoxious windbags who couldn't keep their mouths shut and the kids of Finarfin were mute weirdos.

There seemed to be an unspoken law among siblings, even those who would usually proclaim that there was no bigger pest than your own brother or sister, and it was this:

Imagine a playground. Furthermore, imagine a wooden castle. A group of siblings is playing there. Of course, everyone wants to go up into the towers and be king or queen of the castle and with the ruthlessness existent only between evil patricians or brothers and sisters, they will try to chase each other out of the tower by all means possible. (1) The oldest sibling will of course win, and the younger brothers and sisters become frustrated, shout and scream, and an argument will inevitably break out.

Now imagine a movement at the edge of the playground.

Imagine the heads of the group of children snapping around at the noise.

Imagine a new group of children approaching.

And now watch the dynamics change.

Seconds ago, they siblings would have shoved and pushed and hit each other just to get to the top of the tower. And now watch how they retreat into the castle in practised, perfect uniform movement, barricading themselves on the tower, their unity growing with every step that the strangers draw closer. Seconds ago, it was okay to get on each other's nerves and pester your siblings to your heart's desire. But seconds ago is not now. As soon as there is another group of kids that approaches, every brawl and every feud is momentarily laid aside and the siblings who would have gladly thrown stones at each other moments before will now shift to stand back to back, no longer looking at themselves in anger, but at the __others__ with wary distrust.

No child present was aware of this fascinating and complex dynamic among groups of children in all worlds and ages, but they were still following those rules to a tee.

Naturally, they had formed three groups which were standing or leaning on opposite ends of the wall, some of them with their arms crossed, all of them giving the other kids challenging glances. Even the Fëanorions stood together in rare unity and harmony. As much as they would usually bicker and squabble among themselves, they now stood in perfect lines, trying to prove to each other that they were more mature, more serious and more threatening than the others. Curufin and Celegorm who had been fighting not long ago were now standing shoulder to shoulder, throwing distrustful glances as their cousins.

After watching over the introduction and having convinced themselves that the children could be left to their own devices for the time being, Fingolfin and Finarfin took off to look after the unconscious Fëanor.

"Your father's a nutter if you ask me," a dark-haired boy with bright blue eyes said as soon as they were out of earshot. His name was Turgon, and he prided himself on his observational skills.

"Well, no one's asked you," Curufin shot back.

"Just saying what I'm thinking."

"Think quietly, then," Caranthir snarled. "Too much hot hair blowing about here already, no need to add in yours as well."

"You can't forbid him to talk," a slender, blond boy said who looked a lot like Finarfin. His name was Finrod.

"Well, it's my house, so I can do just that," Curufin cut in. "I can order you to do whatever I say. So hold your tongues or I'll kick you out."

"Your house?" a girl with black hair cut in a mocking tone. "You're a bit little to be ownin' a house, aren't you?"

Curufin's face reddened. "I ain't little!"

"You sure are," the girl said. "I bet you're shorter than me."

"I'm not!"

"Are too. And it's not your house. It's your father's."

Curufin could not argue against the sensible point the girl had made, so he just snorted and turned away. If you could not win an argument, a change of topic was in order. Like every child who had grown up with a parent he loved and loathed at the same time, he had developed a distinct disregard for authority figures, so despite Finarfin telling them to stay put, he said, "Well, I didn't want to stay here and talk to you anyway." He looked at his brothers. "Let's go somewhere else, I'm bored."

Curufin decided to pretend he did not care about them occupying the hall. That way he could make himself and the others believe that he could have won a confrontation had he chosen to fight.

"But Lord Fingolfin told us to stay here," Maglor said quietly.

Curufin threw his brother an outraged look at this vile act of backstabbing.

"Curufin's right," Maedhros said suddenly and everyone turned to look at him. He was the oldest out of them all and his tall stature and his deeper voice that was slowly edging out of the range of young boys and into that of young men instigated involuntary respect even in his cousins. To a child, it was a voice you felt bound to obey before you even know that an order had been spoken – an adult's voice. "Let's go outside."

Curufin gawked at his older brother. They did not get along too well and most of the time Maedhros was an annoying dampener on his hot temper (or, as Curufin liked to call him, a spoilsport), so he was more than surprised to have his eldest brother agree on something with him for once.

"You heard him," Curufin said, turning to his siblings. "All Fëanorions follow me," he ordered. And he marched off, but Maedhros' next words made him stop dead in his tracks.

"I was talking about all of us." He met Curufin's protest with a hard glare. "I mean it. Initially, we went to ask for help because we children had a problem, but our fathers are already making that all about __themselves__ again. Have the adults worry about __us__ for once instead of the other way round." There was a tang of bitterness to his voice that escaped the younger children, except a blonde girl whose forehead was creased in a slight frown when she followed her cousins and brothers out of the front door and into the nightly gardens.

* * *

(1) _In this case,_ means _is derived from_ mean _as in_ nasty _and_ vicious _. We are talking about children here._

* * *

To a child, a wide garden with lots of trees and bushes and secret nooks to explore was a marvellous place to be. To a curious and adventurous child, a garden at night was __paradise.__

Aredhel loved sneaking barefoot over the dewy grass, away from the lanterns that lit the paved paths that meandered here and there, away from the tame, cut grass and marble fountains, into the wild, secretive dark places between rustling leaves and silvery trees with the silver light of Telperion and your own breathlessness as your only companions.

Unfortunately, the part of the gardens she was allowed in was all flat and well-lit and tame and she could count the few little hideouts she had there on one hand.

But __this__ , this was what she'd always dreamed her garden to be.

It was great and wild and the grass wasn't trimmed everywhere and she could not see the ends of it. There were dewy spider-webs between the bushes and there were trees and brambles and branches snagging on your skirt and there were clumps of trees with secret glades where the light that came through the leaves was blue and silver – and only far off there was the light of the torches that lined the walls of the palace, the terraces and the places the adults stuck to when they wanted to wander the gardens or share a glass of wine on a mild summer evening.

And even though their cousins were mostly acting aloof or unfriendly safe for Maedhros, she knew they were all bluster and no bite. They were enjoying sneaking through the garden as much as she was and she knew it, mostly because they had adopted the watchful quiet of children who were out of bed after curfew and on a prohibited prowl. The had formed a marching order of sorts with Maedhros and Curufin leading the way. The rest of the Fëanorions followed, then Aredhel, Turgon and Finrod, who were blabbering on about some building project they were doing. Then came Fingon and at last, trailing at some distance behind them, Galadriel who was craning her neck to look up at the trees with a strange, lost expression.

Aredhel watched her for some time, her own female instincts (which were almost constantly suppressed due to her growing up exclusively among brothers) egging her on take the opportunity to make another girl-friend. It seemed like some kind of etiquette that whenever two girls meet among a crowd of boys, they must team up. She wondered whether she should fraternise – or __sororise__?- with this girl. But then her eyes grazed her eldest cousin and her curiosity got the better of her. She accelerated her steps.

"Where are you going to take us?" she asked, trying to keep up to Maedhros, who was covering a lot of ground with his long strides.

"It's a secret. You can't tell the grown-ups." He winked at her. "You'll see soon enough."

Aredhel flashed him a brilliant smile and drew her finger over her lips. "I'll be dead before they take the secret from me."

"Oh Namó, no. I wouldn't want you to go that far." He looked almost worried for a moment.

"Wait, where __are__ we taking them?" Curufin suddenly snapped. "Not to our you-know-what, right?"

"Exactly there," Maedhros said cheerfully.

"But you can't!" Caranthir suddenly said. "That's __our__ secret hideout! If they know it won't be secret any longer!"

"What good is a secret hideout if it's so secret __no one__ can use it?" Maedhros said. "Besides, no one of you's been going there for three years at least and our father and uncles won't ever find us."

"I wanted to go there just __today__!" Curufin grouched and tried to kick his older brother's shin who swiftly sidestepped it and tripped him up with the next step.

Curufin stumbled and grabbed Aredhel's sleeve. There was a loud tearing noise and when Curufin looked at what he had done, he had the grace to say, "Oh" and go a bit pale.

Aredhel looked at her sleeve which was currently hanging somewhere in the region of her wrist all bunched up. She met Curufin's insecure and embarrassed look and grinned. "That's quite all right. I like the new look of my dress better this way, anyway." And with that she pulled the sleeve off her wrist leaving her left arm bare from the shoulder, twisted it and folded it around her head as a bandanna to keep her hair out of the way.

"How'd you like it?"

She put her hands on her hips and turned around, beaming.

Whatever reaction the other kids, especially the sons of Fëanor, had expected—this wasn't it. They were standing there with their hackles raised as if waiting for a thunderstorm to break loose about the ruined dress, but when she only grinned at them, all the tension and the fight gradually seeped out of them.

"I like it," Maglor blurted out. "You look like a Hunter-Maia of Oromë, a wild fierce spirit bounding through the forest like a deer!" He stopped himself, suddenly a bit embarrassed about his poetic outburst.

"Well, I ain't never seen a deer with a headband before," Aredhel mused, "but there's lots of strange stuff in the world and I reckon such a deer wouldn't be the weirdest of 'em."

Fingon looked like he was about to say something about missing a point by astronomical proportions, but then he thought otherwise and closed his mouth again.

"So," Curufin said, swallowing his shock and embarrassment and turning on his brothers, his voice back to being snappish and commanding, "you don't really wanna show them our secret meeting place, right?"

"I'm against it," Caranthir grumbled. "It was __our__ secret and they are not __us__ , right?"

Celegorm and Curufin nodded. Maedhros' face was very, very still. Maglor was dragging the tip of his boot over the ground again and again.

"I dunno," he said quietly. "I'd like to show them. I mean, we don't __have__ any friends we could show it to, do we? Father kept that away from us, but I was thinking… I was thinking maybe we should not do everything like he'd do it. Maybe we should just … not keep everything to ourselves but share instead."

Maglor looked searchingly from one brother to the other and then to Aredhel's siblings and Uncle Finarfin's children.

Curufin's and Caranthir's faces darkened at that. Celegorm looked as if he was seriously thinking about the words. Maedhros was smiling faintly.

"Good idea, Kano," he said. "Just what I was thinking."

Curufin's eyes were spitting flame. He whirled around, staring up at his older brother. "You're a traitor," he hissed.

Maedhros looked down at him, unimpressed. "And you're a little pest, but I'm not complaining about that day in day out, am I? Get your act together, Curvo, and be nice for once in your life."

"I'd rather go somewhere else. Celegorm, Caranthir, are you coming?" He stomped off into the darkness between the trees, and his brothers moved to follow him, but they stopped when Maedhros called after him.

"You'll go away and leave the hiding place to your cousins, completely unsupervised?" he asked, a devious smirk playing around his lips.

Curufin was very still. Then, without another word, he turned around and stomped back to his assigned place in the marching order. Maedhros watched it with a satisfied smile which he hid quickly when Curufin shot a diabolical glare in his direction.

"What about Huan?" Celegorm asked and Galadriel's head perked up at the mention of the dog. "He won't find us while we're up there."

Maedhros thought about it while their cousins were obviously puzzled by what could be meant by 'up there'.

"He'll be all right," Maedhros said. "He's a smart dog. If he wants to find you, he still has your scent to follow. He certainly won't bark up the wrong tree and besides," he added with a wink, "even if he does, he's loud enough we could not possibly miss it."

Celegorm did not look entirely convinced, but he returned to his spot next to Maglor.

"Does anyone else have a problem?" Maedhros asked. "No? Good. Come on then, follow me."

"You know," Aredhel said to Curufin when they were walking again, "I could tear off my other sleeve and make you a bandanna, too. We all could make a club or something like that. Club of Headbands. Or the Famous Fiv—no, the Terrific Ten! If we find Huan, we'll even have a dog!"

"Oh, be silent, you," he growled, but it wasn't quite as ferocious as usual and there might have been a smile tugging at his lips instead of a snarl.

* * *

"Follow me," Fëanor said and climbed over a crate.

"I may be missing something," Fingolfin said and brushed a huge spider-web away that was hanging in his path, "but when did we elect to put __you__ in charge of this?"

Fëanor did not stop and clambered over a dusty wooden rocking horse. "Because I am the eldest, the smartest and the most suited for leading this undertaking. Also, I don't let myself be __elected__."

" _ _Naturally__ ," Fingolfin said and sarcasm was oozing so thickly from him that it was a wonder he did not slip on it and fall. "Of course you're the best for this task, what with you being the most empathic of us and __so__ practised in putting yourself in your sons' shoes. You're so proficient at emulating a child's mindset and manner of thinking, it's a miracle we haven't found them yet. A dusty, boring, cluttered attic seems exactly like a place where our kids would hide."

"Quite correct," said Fëanor who was obviously missing the sarcasm.

"By the way, does Ungoliant live up here?" Fingolfin brushed away another huge spider-web that blocked the way between two shelves with broken boards and a few old books in them.

"No."

"Well, but something does. You should get a cat to eat your spiders."

"I hate cats."

"Of course you would say that about a pet you couldn't boss around." Fingolfin snorted.

"A dog then," Finarfin said who appeared around the corner of an old wardrobe which was hung with a white cloth. A great lion and a witch were painted on its back and Finarfin traced the painting with his finger. It came peeling off and he watched it a bit sadly.

"As of today, I hate dogs as well." Further to the front, Fëanor stubbed his toe on something and cursed.

"Just because Huan ate your Silmarils you shouldn't disparage an entire species." Finarfin frowned.

"I do not want a pet. I do not like pets, most of all if they eat my creations. Silmarils are not pet food," Fëanor groused.

"Well, at least it was a dog who ate them," Finarfin tried to placate him. "You can call a dog back and tell it to spit out what it has in its mouth. It could have been much worse. Say a cat ate them. Or a spider."

Fëanor turned around and gave him a long glare. "You are being ridiculous."

"I am merely saying it could be a lot worse." Finarfin shrugged.

"Enough of this. I need to find my sons." Fëanor turned around. "Fëanorions! I order you to come out now and have a funny family evening with me!"

Fingolfin threw Finarfin an askew glance. "I may be mistaken, but somehow I have the impression that he got the idea of a family evening completely wrong."

Finarfin shrugged. "He'll get to it eventually." He hesitated. "At least I hope so."

When no answer came and Fëanor had finished rummaging through the obscure corners where remnants of his son's early childhood were hidden, he returned. He was powdered in white, veiled in spider-webs and thoroughly angry. A dusty stuffed elephant was clutched in his hands and it looked quite distressed.

"I will find them," he growled. "And we will spend an entertaining evening together, whether they want it or not." He flung the elephant to the ground where it bounced once and then lay still.

"That's the spirit!" Fingolfin said and clapped his shoulder.

* * *

It has been mentioned earlier that one perk of being a Fëanorion was that you had a lot of time on your hands. If you asked Fëanor's sons they had put it to good use in their not-so-humble opinion. For example, Maglor had written two symphonies, one string quartet and a suite by the age of eleven, and all his brothers had done something similar in their respective favourite pastimes. Most of the time, each one stuck to their favourite hobbies, but very rarely they came together and decided to do something together. It was at those times that it became apparent what kind of greatness they could achieve if they could just get over their fraternal squabbles and put their minds to one common task.

One of those projects had been the tree-house they had built.

It had been about five years ago and every single Fëanorion had been at an age where you wouldn't usually entrust them with jack saws, big hammers, rusty iron nails and static calculations. Once again, there was nobody there to chaperone them which was the one and only reason the tree-house existed in the first place.

It did, however, turn out surprisingly well for something that had been built by a bunch of boys without any experience in carpentry out of wood that had more likely than not served as the boys' beds, wardrobes, shelves and as garden tool-shed at some earlier point in time.(2)

The tree-house was in a far-off, hidden corner of the garden where even the gardeners only went every three years or so. It was quite big, had two rooms, a table and a few rickety chairs, and most importantly, it hadn't fallen down yet. It could be entered only via a rope ladder that was tied around the trunk of the tree. Since the rope was Elven rope, it was quite easy to miss against the silver-grey bark of the trees.

The children climbed the ladder and even Curufin and Celegorm could not hide their self-satisfied smirks when their cousins stood there with their mouths open, admiring the house they had built together.

" _ _You__ built that?" Turgon asked with an expression of disbelief.

"Yes," Caranthir said snidely. "Impressed?"

"Well… it's __okay...ish__ ," Turgon said reluctantly and secretly resolved to built something much bigger, better and more awesome than a tree-house. Something like, say, a palace. Or a city. Or a rocket ship. Well, okay, maybe not a rocket ship. A city would do. One look at Finrod and he knew they were both sharing the same thought. Finrod raised a questioning eyebrow and Turgon nodded darkly. Hell would freeze over before they'd be outdone by the spoiled brood of Fëanor.

"Guests first," Maedhros said, pointed at the ladder and grabbed Curufin by the scruff of his neck before he could scramble up the latter first out of sheer spite. One after the other they took the climb. Getting all ten of them up there in the dark required a bit of time and caution, but after a few minutes spent cussing and scrabbling for purchase, they had all made it safely up the ladder.

"That's neat, they're connected!" Fingon said, stopped dusting off his sleeves, and went over to an opening in the adjacent wall where a rope served as a handrail along a thick tree limb that led over to the next tree. In fact, up here the garden looked like a climbing park that had grown haphazardly over the years. Ropes connected tree trunk upon tree trunk and swung away into the darkness. Here and there there were crude platforms of boards which had been nailed to the broader to create some space where you could sit or stand. "Hey, Finrod, don't your people use those platforms, too?"

Finrod came over to Fingon and took a peek through the opening. "Yeah. We call them __flets__."

" _ _Flets__?"

"Yeah."

"Sounds Vanyarin or Telerin. What's it mean?" Aredhel asked who had stepped up next to the two boys.

"Well, I guess it means they're flat," Finrod said.

They pondered this for a moment.

"Makes sense," Fingon said at last.

Finrod nodded sagely.

"I bet Galadriel would like that," he said. "She's into that kind of weird stuff, aren't you, Artanis?" He turned around, looking for his sister. "Artanis?"

No one answered.

"Has somebody seen my sister?"

There was a bit of shuffling when everyone tried to make sense of who they were standing next to in almost total darkness.

There was some shoving and some __oofs__ when people got elbowed in the ribs, then a sputtering and a little lampstone came aglow in the hands of Curufin. It cast an eerie purple light on the gathered kids who suddenly felt like they were gathered in a secret poker den or participating in a demon conjuring. There was something about the creepy light that made everything that happened in its sheen feel more than slightly illegal.

"She's not here," Finrod said after making a quick headcount. "Oh damn, she must have wandered off again. I'll go and look for her."

"I'm coming, too!" Aredhel volunteered. "I'd love to explore your garden! Finrod can walk in one direction and I can look for Artanis somewhere else!"

"I'm coming as well," Celegorm said. "I'll try to find Huan while we're looking for her."

"And me," Curufin said with a weird expression of badly hidden embarrassment.

"You?" Maedhros asked disbelievingly.

"Well, I can't let her wander around all by herself," Curufin mumbled. "She'll get lost. 'sides, it's common courtesy."

"Well, there are two words I thought I'd never hear out of your mouth." Maedhros smirked and Curufin looked away angrily.

" _ _And__ I don't wanna spend all night with these guys," Curufin added haughtily and nodded over to the sons of Fingolfin and Finarfin.

"Of course."

"That's the real reason," Curufin said.

" _ _Of course__."

"Stop saying that."

Maedhros shrugged, smiling. "If you say so. You can try to find her, the rest of us can stay here." He paused. "Just try not to get off course."

There was a brief silence before the coin dropped, and then Fingon had to manhandle Curufin away from his eldest brother who was at the same time trying to suppress a fit of laughter while not choking on it. Finrod overtook this duty when they reached the rope ladder and Fingon returned to Maedhros to give him a secretive high-five and pressed a gold coin into his hand.

"I need to stop betting against Curufin's temper," Fingon said quietly, leaning in close so said boy wouldn't hear them. "You always win."

Maedhros shrugged and shoved the coin into a pocket in his trousers. "Your fault. It's basically a law of nature that Curvo's gonna flip it some time or later if you bait him long enough."

They both watched as Finrod, Aredhel, Celegorm and Curufin disappeared downwards. Maedhros went down on all fours at the edge and gave a quick and low whistle.

"Guys!"

"Yes?" came the dampened answer from below.

"Stay away from the palace. We don't want them to find us."

"Gotcha." That was Aredhel.

"Let's go," someone said grumpily. "I'm leading."

"No, you little pest, you sure as hell are not." Finrod.

"You can't order me around in my own home!"

"Like hell I can. But don't think I'll burden myself with you. You and your brother go together and I'll be taking Ared—"

"Can't I go with them?"

"But..."

Maedhros pulled his head back when a squabble broke out over who would go with whom and where. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "You wouldn't believe that it could be so hard just to get along with your cousins."

"To be fair, you're one hell of a bunch to get along with." Fingon shrugged.

Maedhros considered arguing against that point, but decided he couldn't. He stood and turned, then froze when he saw Turgon, Caranthir and Maglor who were about to climb out of the other opening where ropes and boards and makeshift bridges formed paths from one tree to another. They had three bluish lampstones in their hands.

"Where are you going?" Maedhros asked.

Maglor turned. "Turgon wanted to see how we built the house from the outside and he wanted to inspect the flats for static prestrain and stress, whatever that means."

Turgon breathed in and he would surely have launched into a long explanation of what exactly that meant, but Maedhros was quicker.

"You can't just run off as well."

"Yes, we can." Caranthir looked at him. He lacked Curufin's drive and hot anger, but there was a constant unnerving directness and bullheadedness about him that made it hard to argue with him, especially when he was stating his decision as simple facts.

Maedhros was looking for words, but none would come. "I thought we-"

Maglor shot him an apologetic glance. "We'll be back soon," he said.

Maedhros' heart sank. He knew they weren't getting along particularly well, but a part of him had hoped that this evening would somehow turn out to be differnet. Truth be told, he could understand the urge of his brother's to get away. All of them cooped up in one small place just didn't work for longer than a short amount of time.

He turned his head away. "Yeah. Off you go. Just take care not to fall."

There was only a little rustle and then the three were gone, leaving Maedhros and Fingon as the only two remaining behind.

"You know, being stuck with me in a tree-house can't be __this__ bad," Fingon said, eyeing Maedhros' face.

Maedhros lifted his head and frowned. "It's not about you. It's—wait, why are you grinning?" Maedhros narrowed his eyes. "Oh, come on, you did __not__ orchestrate this."

Fingon shrugged, the very picture of innocence. "Maybe, maybe not. I might have dropped a little hint to Turgon about how interesting those __flets__ are, back when you were shouting down at Finrod and the others."

Maedhros sighed and slid his hands over his eyes. "Why did you tell them and what are you up to this time? This is not about one of your crazy plans again, isn't it?"

"No—hey, if you are referring to the incident with at the Yule Festival the year before last, that was __not__ intentional and I have no inclination to let you hold that over my head for the rest of my life."

"Truth be told, the moment when your mother discovered you had your siblings make biscuits with a sprinkle of explosives wasn't your finest hour."

"How was I supposed to know the white powder wasn't flour?" Fingon asked indignantly.

"Because the label said 'potassium perchlorate'?"

"Young and naive as I was, at that time I did not occur to me that our pyromaster might store chemical explosive components in the pantry and I just assumed it was edible," Fingon deflected. "He told me later on that he thought the uppermost shelf of the cupboard with boring baking ingredients was the only place us boys surely wouldn't go. All that aside, nothing happened and we got to use the biscuits as firecrackers and throw them at Melkor during the parade." He grinned. Slowly, however, his sheepish smile faded and he looked up at his cousin. "But all my other brilliant ideas aside, that's not the reason I sent the others off."

"No?" Maedhros raised an eyebrow.

"Nah. I did it because of you."

Maedhros repeated the sentence _"_ _ _I want to be alone in a tree-house you"__ in his head three times, but it didn't get any less weird. "You did it because of me," he repeated slowly and quite flatly.

"Yeah. In case you haven't noticed, there's such a huge invisible weight on your shoulders, it's a miracle the tree-house hasn't broken down yet. In fact, the floorboards are bending a bit where you are standing."

"I don't know what you are talking about." Maedhros crossed his arms.

Fingon threw an arm over his cousin's shoulder. "Don't play dumb with me. There's a load on your shoulders and we both know it won't go away until you spit out whatever's bothering you. Come on." He stepped away and his arm dropped off Maedhros' shoulder, leaving a cold spot where it had been lying. Fingon sauntered over to one of the openings that served as a door.

"Come where?" Maedhros said.

Fingon turned around and his smile was bright and wide and brilliant. "The roof, where else?"

Maedhros gave Fingon a doubtful glance, "Why would you want to go up there?"

"To get my head free for talking. Having the open sky overhead does me a world of good in that respect. You coming?"

Maedhros was not entirely sure he wanted to talk about what was bothering him in the first place. Sitting on the roof under the tree branches and the starry sky sounded nice, though. He pulled himself out of his thoughts, followed Fingon outside, and hauled himself onto the roof after his cousin.

* * *

 _(2) Nerdanel had been quite surprised to find her children camping in bedrolls in their own empty rooms one day, but while all of them would grin sheepishly when asked where all the furniture went, no one could be persuaded to give her an answer._

* * *

Galadriel had known that there was something happening with a dog before her father had walked in and told her that there was trouble at her uncle Fëanor's house. She had nodded dutifully as he recounted everything she already knew from accidentally staring into a pitcher of water for too long, and came along to visit her cousins. She knew that they did not like her, but she knew what the Fates had in store for them and it made her a bit more lenient about their shortcomings and faults. Most of the times you looked at the past if you wanted to account for someone's short temper, fears or nightmares, but Galadriel knew that the future had just as tight a grip on you as the bygone days. To Elves, Time was a mill, and the present was nothing more than the small, uncomfortable space between two millstones, with past and future tearing and grinding over you. That was why Elves weren't doing so well in places where Time actually passed, as opposed to the Holy Lands. They tended to get thinner and thinner and worn down until very little was left of them. And the future of the Fëanorions was an especially scary, raw and heavy millstone.

However, there was only so much worrying you could do about a future that lay hundreds of years ahead and sometimes you had to stop and remind yourself to be a child again. So Galadriel came along with the firm intent to look at the present and the present only for the time being and in general just to be a normal girl.

This worked for all but an hour, until after the children had left the adults and the palace behind were heading out towards the tree-house.(3) Without paying attention to the others, she turned left at a birch and followed another path.

A lot of people complained about her tendency to get sidetracked. This was quite an audacious statement to make about a seer and it was completely wrong. Ironically, she was wasn't getting sidetracked __ever__. Quite the contrary, she was diligently following the glowing thread of most important events that wound through her life and they simply did not see it.

Even now everyone had sort of forgotten about to worry for the root of the problem (4), which were the Silmarils and Huan. Celegorm had apparently chased him off and trusted him to come back when the time was right, but no one actually knew where the dog was hiding and that he would not accidentally run into the wrong person. So instead of following the others to the tree-house, Galadriel did what she always did when she needed to know something that she didn't: She went to find a pond and stared at it.

She did it for about five minutes until the veils under the surfaces of the water retreated and allowed her to look __deeper__. She scoured the depths of Time and Probability for Huan, picking out different futures and staring down their alleys as far as her eyes would allow. She leaned forward and blinked, then sat back on her heels. She considered looking along down the same paths of the future again to make sure she had not missed anything, but she __already knew__ that the outcome would be that she hadn't, so she rested her chin in her palm and thought. Her heart was beating faster than usually.

Surprises, for her as for any other seer, were very rare and consequently very exhilarating and very unsettling at the same time.

There was only one thing that was scarier than seeing something unexpected, and that was seeing nothing at all.

She stared down into the pond with Huan's name firmly fixed in mind and looked down the road of his live which ran off into the distance and then was cut of all of a sudden. Huan's road ended and nothing but blackness stared back in her face.

Galadriel shivered and got to her feet. She needed to find someone she could tell about this. Someone who was old and wise and responsible. This excluded her siblings, her cousins, and unfortunately her parents who were all of the above, but not enough.

There was an old proverb that said you could fell a hare with an arrow, but you needed a spear to tackle a boar. Galadriel felt like she was about to tackle a raging elephant head-on. So to stay with the proverb, she'd probably need the equivalent of a battering ram.

* * *

 _(3) She had never been there before nor had anybody told her about its existence, but that wasn't an issue for her of all people._

 _(4) This was something that she had noticed was very common in people. Instead of going for a direct solution to a problem, they'd rather circle around it, propose affirmative action and write a scientific paper about it, blame society and generally do anything but tackle the real issue._

* * *

"My father's a great man," Finrod heard Curufin tell Aredhel pompously for about the fifth time, "and everyone who says otherwise does it because they simply don't understand him. He's got important work to do no one else could do and that's why he's always so busy and impatient because he has to take care of so much."

"I've heard he's busy," Aredhel said vaguely.

"Very much so. It's said the Valar themselves are afraid of him because of what he might do and reach. Lesser people are of course envious and they don't like him, but that's just because of their own narrow minds which cannot comprehend him __at all__."

"Well, I like people because they're nice and not because they're great or something like that, and I honestly don't like Uncle Fëanor all that much." Aredhel admitted quietly. "So that'd mean I'm stupid as well, right?"

There was a long silence which weighed heavily on the delicate bond of a newly formed friendship.

"Well no, not __you__ obviously," Curufin hedged. "Just everyone else."

"Like me, then?" Finrod stopped and turned around.

Curufin, Aredhel and Celegorm stopped dead. Curufin's eyes were shining defiantly in the starlight above, but he did not say anything.

"That's what you said," Finrod went on. "All those who said something against your Daddy are just too stupid to understand him, huh? Tell me, how long did you have to tell yourself this until you believed it?"

Curufin bared his teeth. "I didn't tell myself anything. Our father is great man."

Celegorm stepped forward as well and his face was spelling an impending fight. "He __is__ a great man and he has reasons for everything he does."

"Like killing your dog?"

Celegorm moved his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Must be, right?" Finrod went on. "But maybe __you two__ are just too dumb to understand him. Cutting up your pet seems perfectly reasonable to get his jewels, wouldn't you agree? Of course there are other less cruel and less efficient methods to do it, but those are for _ _lesser men__ and your father wouldn't consider those – which of course no one of us could hope to understand, stupid as we all are.

"Come to think of it, no one, including you, seems to understand Fëanor and that either means that we all are wrong or maybe that there is no way you could understand someone like that. Tell you what, I don't know what kind of great works your father has done and will do – he can invent a flying horse for all I care and I still would not be impressed by it. And do you know why? Because you are his sons and still the only good thing you can praise him for are his inventions and his strictness and the fact that he's never home because he is so smart. That's not admirable, that's __pathetic.__

"He may be the smartest elf who's ever lived and he may be cleverer than all of us, but he is a sorry excuse for a father and I think deep down you know that. And I don't believe for a second that you are really looking up to him for that. You told yourself to admire his brains and his ideas and built yourselves a fancy picture of him in your mind that you defend to everyone who dares questioning him. You idolise that imagination you have of him and you pretend you want to be like him. But I think deep down you don't believe that. Deep down you know he's actually a failure in every aspect that's important for a child. He shouldn't have spent years holed up in his laboratory, but he did it nevertheless because he cared more about his works than he did about his own family. Even now he only came out because his Silmarils were taken away and not because he cared about you."

There was a kind of silence around them that Finrod had never heard before. It was almost resounding in the tense vibration of the air. The ground seemed to shiver beneath his feet and he wondered whether it was because he was light-headed with anger or something else.

Curufin and Celegorm did not say anything.

Then Curufin took a slow and deliberate step forward until he was almost toe to toe with the much taller Finrod.

Both boys were glaring daggers at each other and Curufin looked like he wanted to say something.

Finrod raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms. This was a mistake, because in the next moment, Curufin swung back his hand. Finrod was not fast enough to uncross his arms and Curufin punched Finrod's stomach so hard the air went out of him. Finrod doubled over and wheezed, trying to regain his breath while Curufin stood before him, fists clenching and obviously thinking about striking again, when Aredhel grabbed his wrist.

Curufin's head whipped around and he tried to break her grasp, but Aredhel added her second hand to the death grip she had on his arm.

"If you do that again," she said, "I will have to stop you."

"I'd like to see you try," Curufin spat, still trying to break out of her grasp by bending her fingers open one by one.

"I won't try," Aredhel said calmly. "I'll succeed."

Finrod looked up with a pained grimace. Now that he was bent over, he was nearly at eye level with Curufin whose eyes were burning with fury. He had difficulty breathing, but there was something that had to be said and he would not allow a punch to stop him from doing it.

"Curufin," he said and gulped down another deep breath. "If the only arguments you have speaking for your father are your fists, your standpoint can't be that good in the first place, you know?"

"Shut up!" Curufin shouted and gave the arm Aredhel was holding onto another yank.

But Finrod went on relentlessly. This had been glossed over for too long, it __had__ to be said out loud. "Deep down you know that there's something else he should have been for you and you __know__ how much he failed you. You don't admire your father. You don't even like him. And tell you what, you are probably right to do so and that's the saddest part of all. The thing is, he probably doesn't even care about it, just like he doesn't care about anyone but himself."

Finrod slowly counted to ten in his head and he sincerely believed Curufin would lash out at him with his other hand. But nothing like this happened. Both Curufin and Celegorm just stared at him like an apparition.

"Let me go," Curufin said softly without looking at Aredhel.

She hesitated, then let go of his hand.

Both sons of Fëanor made a small step backwards, both avoiding any eye contact. Then, as if on an invisible signal, both turned and ran away, each in a different direction. There was a rustle of grass and leaves and then they were gone.

Finrod stood there and slowly righted himself to his full height again. With great effort he worked his clenched fists open. It was unlike him to lose his temper like that, but the glaring hypocrisy of it all had let something in him snap.

"What you said really wasn't nice," Aredhel said quietly.

Finrod took a few deep breaths and then looked down at his little cousin. "The truth's rarely nice. And if you're honest, they deserve every bit of it."

"Aren't you confusing Uncle Fëanor's fault with theirs?"

"Just because their father is an even worse idiot does not automatically make them anything else than brats," Finrod said. "Besides, it's about time they open their eyes and realise how much their oh-so-flawless Fëanor they so adore cares about them."

They both set off again and walked in silence next to each other for a while. Their footfalls on the soft grass was the only sound safe for the hoot of the odd night owl. Aredhel seemed to be lost in thought, but at last she spoke.

"I don't think it's true," she said slowly and pensively. "Which ain't supposed to mean you're wrong about Uncle Fëanor being a bit, er, strange, but I think every father loves his children and so does he."

"He has a fine way of showing that," Finrod snorted.

The remark made Aredhel think again. "Maybe he just hasn't realised it how to do it yet."

"Then I hope he learns fast, because I don't think he's got much time left to work it out." Finrod frowned and accelerated his steps.

* * *

Turgon inclined his head to one side, then to the other and examined the construction of nails, boards, ropes and knots under the light of the lampstone. "I have no idea how you did it, but this is __stable__ ," he said.

"Just because __you__ could not have done it doesn't mean __we__ couldn't have one it," Caranthir drawled from where he was standing leaning against the tree trunk with his arms crossed.

Turgon stood, brushed off his knees and then shook his head. "Sorry to call you out on your false sense of superiority, but by all rights no one should have been able to make a stable platform with so few nails and … you know. Lack of planning."

"We are known to be extraordinary," Caranthir said. It did not sound boastful, he said it as if it was a matter of fact. Which it probably was, unfortunately.

Maglor threw him a pained side glance, but Turgon just rolled his eyes.

"Who told you that except your mum, your servants and your grandma? Because those three don't count," Turgon shot back.

"Pretty much everyone," Caranthir shrugged, "and you biting your tongue instead of praising us doesn't change the fact that this is brilliant __one bit.__ "

Turgon had a sharp comment already at the tip of his tongue, but then he saw the strangely sad expression on Maglor's face and the snide, haughty face of Caranthir. Suddenly it occurred to him that some people who were always alone were often sad like Maglor, but others built a mask for themselves and if no one bothered to look past it, it would be impossible to tell what was the real person and what was just an act. Just because you were wearing a mask that smiled arrogantly did not mean that the real you wasn't sad underneath.

He swallowed what he wanted to say. Someone had to take the first step. He'd always agreed that it should be the ones who had acted wrongly to do it. But maybe… maybe some people could not even do it. How was Caranthir supposed to show admiration for someone else or admit his own weaknesses if he had not been taught how to do it?

"All right. It's a pretty great house you built. And those platforms are not half-bad. I mean, I would not want to sleep on them, but they are quite good."

Caranthir looked baffled for the blink of an eye, then he carefully schooled his features back into a neutral expression. "Good of you to acknowledge it."

"I can admit that works of others are good, yes," Turgon said. "Can you?"

"I can," Maglor suddenly said. "I heard about the drawings for the new palace wing that you have drawn and the architects said that they were __really__ good. I'd like to see them some time."

Turgon blinked. He had not been aware that those drawings had leaked even to the Fëanorian part of the House of Finwë. That one of the arrogant sons of Fëanor had heard of them and even considered them __good__ made his heart swell with pride. "Why, thanks. I heard that you were really into composing music, right?"

"I'm dabbling," Maglor said with a sheepish grin that chased away the sadness like a ray of sunlight evaporated the fog over a meadow.

"Dabbling in? Which instrument?"

"Any, really. Grand piano, harp, flute..."

" _ _Wicked__. I've always wanted to play an instrument, but I don't have the talent for it," Turgon went on. "Care to show me something you wrote?"

In an instant, the shadow was back over Maglor's face. "I don't know," he said evasively. "Mother thinks it's all nice and good, but Father never bothered to listen to anything I wrote. I reckon it's not that good."

"You should not mistake your father's approval for a universal judgement of your talent. Except on the off-chance that he's an even more infallible composer than Eru himself in which case I'll take my chances with you." Turgon grinned lopsidedly.

The corners of Maglor's mouth quirked upwards. "If you are sure."

"As sure as I am that this ungodly climbing park should have fallen down three years ago."

"Hey!" Caranthir said, but it lacked the edge of real anger.

"Then let's go to the music room!" Maglor said and suddenly there was fire in his eyes and they were glinting in the dark. He obviously didn't care any longer about what Maedhros had told them about staying away from the palace. "I'll show you. Are you coming as well, Moryo?"

Caranthir shrugged. "It's not as if I have anything better to do." He pushed himself off the tree trunk.

"Great," Maglor said. "Follow me, there's a rope over there where we can climb down to the ground."

A minute later they were on the ground and they pelted towards the palace and sneaked in, three secretive little shadows united in their own little conspiratorial plan.

"We gotta take care that they don't spot us, wherever they are," Caranthir said when he peered around a corner, cool and aloof as always, but it did not escape Turgon that both brothers had said "we" and "us" and this time, it included even him as their cousin.

They sneaked in, but to their surprise found the palace entirely empty.

"Why did they leave?" Caranthir wondered.

Turgon and Maglor shared a glance and Maglor shrugged.

"In order to search for us, I guess."

"Yes, but __where__ are they?"

* * *

Finarfin was currently feeling stupid for various reasons.

One of them was that he was crouching like a thief behind a bush and had his back pressed to a marble pillar of the open-air ballroom where the Festival of Light was taking place.

"I feel dumb," he told the stone in his hand which was, incidentally, the second reason why he was feeling stupid. He looked up just in time to see a female elf walking past him and throwing him an awkward glance out of the corner of her eyes."People are giving me strange looks."

" _ _Maybe it's because you're not hiding well enough,"__ the stone answered with Fingolfin's voice who sounded like he was amusing himself too much by far.

"I am fairly confident it is because I am squatting behind a bush and talking to a stone with a fake moustache taped to my face," Finarfin replied grouchily.

" _ _I don't see what's wrong with that,"__ the stone replied cheerfully.

"Well of course you do not, because you got a cowl of Elvish make to hide your face," Finarfin shot back. "I'm not even sure I want to know of what make my moustache is."

There was a short static noise and then Fingolfin's voice was cut off by Fëanor's deep growl. _"_ _ _Stop bickering. I did not give you the telestones for fun. Have you seen them yet?"__

" _ _Negative__ ," Fingolfin said.

Finarfin craned his head around the pillar, which caught him another few awkward glances of some passers-by who were just returning from a stroll in the gardens to the ballroom surrounded by white columns.

"I can't see them either. I still don't understand why we are looking for them here," Finarfin said.

A few fireflies were dancing around his head and he waved them away with his hand. Lampions were hanging from branches and along the cobbled paths that meandered through the gardens. There was music and dancing and the paths through the wide, open gardens were lit with torches for those who preferred a stroll through the soft violet dusk to the brightness of the crowded dance floor. Over everything rose the palace of Varda, a building that seemed to be made of glass and star-light. The Queen of Stars did not live here, but she was known to come here in spring from time to time. It was nice, but he couldn't see why children would voluntarily come to such a formal gathering.

" _ _Because we are looking for a bunch of teenagers and kids and this is a party with music, mead and maidens,"__ the stone in his hand answered with Fingolfin's voice. _"_ _ _If you wanted to catch a deer you'd also go looking for it in the woods. Right?"__

Finarfin opened his mouth and closed it again. "But why the moustache?"

" _ _Well, it__ is __a costume ball,"__ Fingolfin said.

"But we are not participating," Finarfin insisted.

" _ _It is a necessary disguise,"__ Fëanor replied. _"_ _ _If my beloved wife finds out that I have lost our children, she will get very angry at me. Appearing at the Festival she is attending without them is not an option."__

"Yes, __your__ wife, but why does that mean Fingolfin and me have to disguise ourselves as well?" Finarfin asked.

" _ _Your presence would attract unwanted attention."__

Another couple walked past him and stared at Finarfin as if he'd grown a second head. Finarfin turned his face back to the stone. "I guess it's a good thing then that the moustache isn't attracting any attention __at all__."

" _ _Do I detect a hint of sarcasm or is that just interference?"__ Fingolfin sounded like he was enjoying himself immensely and Finarfin resented him a bit for that.

"I am just surprised that someone who invents the telestone cannot come up with a more suitable way of handling his wife," Finarfin grumbled.

There was a longer silence from the stone.

" _ _Emotion may not be my area of expertise,"__ Fëanor said at last. Finarfin thought to himself that it was a miracle how his eldest brother could admit a weakness and still make it sound like it was someone else's fault.

" _ _By the way,"__ Fingolfin cut in, _"_ _ _not that I am complaining, but why is it that your inventions are always stones? An earring or something smaller would have been a lot more practical as a remote talking device. What about a ring? You'd have your hands free."__

"I don't think that would catch on," Finarfin mused. "People talking to each other all the time and everywhere would defeat the purpose of putting distance between yourself and someone else entirely. Besides, who needs to talk to everyone at any given time when you can just agree to meet for tea?"

" _ _As entertaining as it is to hear you talking about something you don't have the faintest idea about,"__ Fëanor's voice cut in sharply, _"_ _ _we have come here for a purpose and that is to find my children."__

" _ _And mine,"__ Fingolfin reminded him.

"And mine," Finarfin added.

" _ _Yes, them too__ ," Fëanor allowed grouchily. _"_ _ _How are your positions?"__

"I am at the entrance near the gardens. I can observe the outer ballroom, the podium for the stage play and the gardens themselves," Finarfin said. "No trace of them."

" _ _I am at the banquet and I can confirm they have not come here to eat from the delicious food or drink some wine,"__ Fingolfin said. _"_ _ _The honeycomb is most delectable, by the way. I can take some for you as well if you like."__

There was an undefined sound coming from the stone that might have been Fëanor. Finarfin's suspicion was confirmed when his eldest brother said, " _ _Forget it. Stay where you are, I am going to look for them myself. I am going to search the dance floor."__

" _ _Yes, I can see you,"__ Fingolfin said. _"_ _ _Have I ever mentioned how lovely you look in Melkor's old helmet? It is as if it was made for you."__

" _ _Silence."__

" _ _No, really, the entire design fits your character so well. Black, edgy, with dangerous spikes and big enough to accommodate both your head and your ego. Why do you even have it?"__

" _ _Shut up."__

There was a longer silence during which Fëanor, as Finarfin guessed, was searching the dance floor while Fingolfin was watching from the podium with the banquet.

" _ _I trust you are aware of the fact that you are heading straight for where your wife is dancing,"__ Fingolfin said suddenly.

" _ _Fingolfin, would you—what? Are you serious?"__

" _ _Very much so. She's behind the throng of people directly ahead of you."__

" _ _Damn. In this case it is to risky to go on. I got a good look at the crowd anyway and the children are not here. I am coming back. I will meet you at the entrance door to the palace__ ," Fëanor said. _"_ _ _We can confer on how to proceed from there."__

" _ _All right."__

"That's fine. See you there." Finarfin sighed and rose, his his knees making an odd noise from being crouched in the bushes so long. Pain lanced up his legs, but when he was finally standing, it gradually made way for the pure bliss of being able to stand up straight. He dusted himself off and let his eyes sweep over the gathered Elves. There were few young ones present, but those he saw were not the children they were looking for.

Slightly unsettled, he stepped out onto a path that would lead him around the column-lined hall where the party was gathered.

He did have the shortest way of all of them to the entrance door to Varda's palace. It was standing wide open in an inviting gesture and sparkles of starlight flitted through the glass they were made off. Finarfin climbed the steps leading up to it and busied himself with trying to peel off the moustache while leaving his upper lip attached to his face.

He did not have to wait for long until a tall figure wrapped in a dark cloak and cowl arrived, closely followed by someone who looked like Melkor would look if he were suddenly five feet shorter. Fingolfin pushed off his cowl and shook out his long dark hair and Fëanor took of his helmet and somehow managed to look even scarier without it than while he had it on.

"I did not see them when I came here," Finarfin said.

"Neither did I," Fingolfin said, "and I made another round around the dance floor to make sure I had not missed them." He threw Fëanor a questioning look, but their older brother just shook his head.

On a second glance, he did not look quite so scary. Sure, there was the perpetual scowl on his face that seemed to be etched there ever since Finarfin could remember, but the shadows under his eyes and the pallor could be interpreted as something else entirely.

"They are not here," Fëanor said, then turned to look out over the merry crowd of dancers, singers, musicians. Lights were dancing above their heads and music was filling the air. "Where are they?" he asked quietly.

For the first time Finarfin could recall, Fëanor looked well and truly lost.

Fingolfin must have noticed as well, because he stepped closer to his older brother and put a hand on his shoulders. "I am sure they're safe and sound. We'll find them eventually."

Fëanor nodded without looking at him. There was a strange twist around his mouth and a tension in his shoulders that was not owed to working over hours in his forge. His posture was changed as well, like predator poised to strike. Suddenly Finarfin realised his elder brother was nervous. Not nervous about not finding his children, no—Fëanor was far too rational for that. They were somewhere around here and they all knew it. They __would__ find them and then Fëanor would have to explain himself to his sons. If Finarfin hadn't known his brother any better, he would have said that Fëanor was afraid.

* * *

 **Next up:** _In which Maedhros and Fingon have a heart to heart, Celegorm and Galadriel set out to find a powerful helper and Curufin makes a disastrous decision._


	3. Down

Notes: The dramatis personae has been updated, including the approximate age of the children in human years.

Thanks to chisscientist and Elenluin for leaving reviews!

* * *

 **III. Down**

 _In which Maedhros and Fingon have a heart to heart, Celegorm and Galadriel set out to find a powerful helper and Curufin makes a disastrous decision._

* * *

The air was cool up here and the stars shone brilliantly, like diamonds scattered over black velvet. Maedhros was lying on his back and staring up at the sky, feeling his own breaths flow in and out of him by turns in waves of cold and warm air.

Fingon was lying next to him, his hands clasped behind his head and one leg propped up by the ankle on the knee of the other.

"So," Fingon said at last after they had been lying silently next to each other for what felt like an eternity, "Spill. What's wrong?"

For a moment, Maedhros was tempted to answer with _"_ _ _Too damn much"__ , but he bit it back and actually thought about it.

"It's all right," he said at last. "I mean there's stuff that's are bugging me, but everyone has those. I am fine—and I am not going to whine like a brat about the little things that aren't going my way. It could be a lot worse, so I shouldn't complain."

Fingon turned his head to look at him. "Follwing your logic you shouldn't be allowed to rejoice either, since there are a lot of people who're happier than you are. Then again, you're doing a splendid job being unhappy as it is, so you and your dumb philosophy should be fine."

"You make this sound more dramatic than it is, really. A lot," Maedhros said with a grimace.

"Yeah, maybe. And maybe not, because you are someone who'd rather chew his own leg off than admit that he has a problem." Fingon snorted.

"There is no problem," Maedhros said.

"Liar. I've watched you for some time now and something is bugging you, as in ' _ _really__ bugging you'."

Maedhros narrowed his eyes. "It's almost as if you __want__ me to whine."

"I wanted to say that I was lending you an ear as a friend for your woes and worries, but if you want to put it in derogatory terms so badly, then yes; I am telling you to whine."

Maedhros smirked at him. "Tough luck, because I won't." He remembered something and sat up. "We've been up here for quite some time, I think we should go and look after the others," he mumbled almost to himself and crawled over to the edge of the roof. Meaning he would have, if Fingon had not suddenly grabbed him by the collar and yanked him backwards. Maedhros' stomach lurched and then he found himself flat on his back, blinking up at the silhouette of his cousin.

"That's what I meant!" Fingon said heatedly. "That's __exactly__ what's wrong with you! All you ever think about are your brothers!"

Maedhros pried Fingon's fingers off his shirt and sat up. "Excuse me, but one of us has to do it. Contrary to some other people I can't only ever think of how to fill up my free time or lie down on sofas to talk about my __problems__ ," he said, his tone interlaced with the beginnings of annoyance.

"Now you're being an ass."

"And you're being jealous," Maedhros retorted.

Fingon seemed honestly taken aback at that. "I'm not jealous," he said.

Maedhros narrowed his eyes and decided to press his advantage. "Yes, you are. I know you've been peeved because I can't come over and spend as much time with you anymore, but some of us do can't spend all their time playing games because they have important things to take care of."

Even as he said the words he became aware of what he was implying and judging by his darkening expression, Fingon had noticed it as well. But the words were out, they had been intended to sting and they did and there was not taking them back.

"If you want to insult me with being irresponsible then grow a backbone and say it to my face," Fingon said in a tone that suddenly reminded Maedhros that it was a bad idea to start a fight with your cousin when both of you were perched on the roof of a tree-house some thirty feet above solid ground.

"I wasn't—I didn't mean to say that you were irresponsible," he back-pedalled. The lie came out as easily as the sincerest of truths and he knew that neither believed it for a second.

"Then what __did__ you want to say?"

"I wanted… I didn't…. I am just trying to do everything right and look out for my brothers!" Maedhros said heatedly. "I am the eldest and an eldest brother just has some—some responsibilities!"

"Yeah, __I__ would know, in case you've forgotten," Fingon said, his voice hard. "And I know that __you__ raising your little brothers isn't one of them."

"Why are you always going on about that?" Maedhros' temper flared and he struggled to wrestle it down again. Calmer, he continued, "There's nothing wrong with me taking care of them."

Fingon noticed his visible effort to stay civil and thankfully tried to calm down as well. "You're not just 'taking care of them'," he said after taking a deep breath. "You're around them every hour of the day and you yourself told me that you are teaching them the sword drills, that you are studying with them and that they come running to you with every problem they have."

Maedhros bristled. Why on Arda was Fingon so intent on turning everything he was doing on its head to make it look bad? He tried valiantly to rein in his annoyance, but still the words came out sharper than he intended. "So __what?__ We get along and naturally they'd come to me and I'd help them. Is that a problem?"

Fingon crossed his arms and shook his head. "No. The problem is that you are in over your head picking up your father's slack and you don't even notice." He stared at a piece of moss that had grown over the wood of the roof, then lifted his eyes to meet Maedhros' gaze.

Maedhros' expression turned dark. Slowly he stood. "Do __not__ judge my father or anyone else in my family. You're not part if of it and you don't know the next thing about us," he said warningly, looking down at his cousin.

Fingon watched him, narrowed his eyes and then got to his feet as well. "Do you," he said slowly, "even notice how as soon as someone dares to criticise your family, all of you Fëanorions draw back and close yourselves off, hackles raised and start to growl? Weren't you the one who wanted us to stick together earlier? But lo and behold! One bad word about the Holy Fëanor and __we__ is gone, it's back to __you__ and __us__. Can't take a little bit of hard truth, all of you, huh?"

Maedhros looked away. "I just don't want you to talk about something you have no idea about. You don't know what's going on in my family." He paused and then the frustration that had been waiting behind a crumbling dam just spilled forth. "No one knows anything about us, yet everyone is talking about my father as if they knew him and judge him when they have never met him at all."

Fingon briefly looked like he was about to say something snappish and rash and in that moment he resembled his own father very much. Maedhros bit his tongue mere moments before he could snap back at him when he realised that this was exactly what his father would have done if he'd been arguing with Uncle Fingolfin. For a brief, bizarre moment Maedhros wondered how they'd gotten here, both acting out their respective father's roles as if the boys were somehow obliged to continue __their__ feud.

Fingon apparently realised this in the very same moment, remembering that he was not Fingolfin and that he was not talking to Fëanor, because he forced the tension out of his shoulders and quietly said, "I am not everyone. I am your cousin and I know your father who happens to be my uncle."

Maedhros' mouth was drawn into a tight, thin line. He looked away. "You don't." For a brief instant he was tempted to add __Hell,__ I _ _barely know him__ , but it would have contradicted the point he was trying to make, so he didn't. He looked back at his cousin. "You've barely ever talked to him. __We__ are the only ones who know him. And he is a good dad. He cares for us, just like your dad cares for you."

Fingon shook his head and then crossed the roof in three long strides, whirling around when he reached the edge and walking down the length again. After he had done this four times, he stopped, as if he had reached a conclusion and turned around to face his cousin, planting his feet shoulder-wide and asked, "Then why is he leaving you alone to fend for yourselves most of the time?"

Maedhros only barely held back an exasperated groan. "Because he is busy, in case you haven't noticed. He has work to do, and he can't stay at home."

Fingon cocked his head to one side. "Important work?"

"Yes."

"Work so important that he cannot come home to his sons every day?"

There was a sly glint in Fingon's eyes that made Maedhros feel uncomfortably like he was being cornered. "Looks like it," he ground out grudgingly.

Fingon's smile only confirmed his suspicion. "Work so important that it takes the Silmarils to lure him out of his workshop."

For a moment, Maedhros was actually at a loss for words. When he opened his mouth all that came out was, "Fingon, you damned—"

But Fingon cut him off. "Don't blame me for putting something in perspective that your father did."

Try to turn the argument around as he might, Maedhros could not deny his cousin had a point without sounding like a complete fool. Fingon had not done anything. Father had left them alone often and for long spans of time. This was a fact. Fingon was stating these facts, but that did not make __him an__ obnoxious nag.

"I don't blame you," Maedhros said and made a tired gesture, waving off some invisible thing in front of him. "Just stop with the jabs. I know it could be different. I mean I can __see__ your family. I'm not blind and I am not stupid. But my dad is not like your dad. It can't be helped that his work is so important to him. But he's doing it for everyone's benefit, not just for his own." His expression brightened when he remembered something that even Fingon would not be able to brush aside. "Take the lampstones for example. Everyone in Tirion is using them now and they can't imagine life without them! What they don't seem to think of is that great inventions don't grow on trees. They take a lot of time to come up with. And if he is rarely at home as a result, it's only natural I as the eldest should take over his duties."

Fingon watched him through narrowed eyes for a very long time until he asked, "How long did it take you to rationalise that to yourself until you finally believed it?"

For a moment Maedhros was tempted to throw his cousin off the roof. The nerve! He settled for raking his hand through his hair. "By Lórien, you read one of those psychology books again, didn't you? It did not __rationalise__ anything. That's simply how things _are_ _ _.__ "

Fingon shrugged. "In this case I'm amazed that you can't even explain something you're doing everyday which just so happens to muck up your entire life."

Maedhros had half a mind to let out a cry of frustration. "I __did__ explain it, but it's not my fault if you're not able to understand!"

"You're making excuses on your dad's behalf, that's not the same as explaining why you have such a messed up role distribution in your family."

Maedhros rolled his eyes, turned away and shook his head. How the hell was he supposed to explain it when Fingon was so intent on not wanting to understand—damn it. "I give up. You don't get it. You're too young."

"I am almost as old as you," Fingon shot back.

Maedhros made a dismissive gesture. "Yes, but you grew up differently. You're still just a child."

Fingon mulled it over. "Yes, I am a child," he said. "As are you."

Maedhros opened his mouth, then closed it again. "You wouldn't understand. It's complicated," he said at last.

Fingon heaved out a long, weary sigh. "And that's where you've got it all backwards. It's not __meant__ to be complicated. We're children, as we are __supposed__ to be. But I think you have forgotten that because you are so busy running after your brothers and are in over your head picking up the pieces your father left behind." He paused. "You know, I may not be you, and I may not know your dad like you do, but I know one thing and that is that children aren't supposed to raise their siblings, teach them sword drills and studying Tengwar with them and what have you—and no reasons you can think of for parents being busy will be able to convince me otherwise. And I know you don't even buy it yourself, not really. You keep telling yourself and everyone else that you are all right, but in reality you're so far from "all right" that you couldn't see it even if you bent over backwards with a telescope."

"If you think so," Maedhros scoffed and waved him off.

Fingon narrowed his eyes and then averted his face. "The day you admit to being wrong will be the day the sky falls down."

"We wouldn't be fighting if you weren't so intent on force-feeding me your opinions."

"I was just trying to help," Fingon said sharply.

Maedhros looked back, trying to keep his face blank and his voice even. "In this case it might be better if you stopped trying so hard, because, well, you're not helping anyone. Rest assured that if I ever need you to save me from something, I'll __ask__."

"Fine," Fingon retorted. "Have it your way."

They shared a few minutes in uncomfortable silence with neither of them knowing what to say now that the mood had been well and thoroughly busted.

"We should go back," Maedhros said at last, his tone deliberately casual. "The hiding game is over, if you ask me."

Thankfully, Fingon decided to go along with ignoring the invisible elephant in the room - their row- and pretending nothing had happened. "Well, it was fun while it lasted," he replied carefully.

They shared a glance and then climbed down and off the roof. They carefully dropped onto the flet, then crept into the silent tree-house.

Fingon was the first to climb down and while he did, Maedhros briefly rested his head and shoulder against the door frame and rubbed his eyes. He was tired and a burning feeling behind his lids was becoming gradually more noticeable whenever he blinked.

When he stepped off the ladder and onto solid ground next to Fingon, he turned around and said, "Let's look for the others and see whether they've found Galadriel yet."

Fingon nodded and together they headed back in the direction of the palace. It was a good a place as any to start looking for their siblings.

* * *

Maglor's fingers were racing over the keys as if things as if errors, inertia and insecurity did not mean anything to them. When he felt like this, mistakeswere something that happened to __other people__. This was where he was good at. This was when he truly felt whole. When his hands were translating the notes in his head into movement as fast as they entered his mind, when the flow of time slowed down and rhythm, melody and harmony wrapped around him in a cocoon of sound to form the one place where he was really at home.

He changed keys with the effortlessness of someone who spoke the language of music with more familiarity than his mother tongue. Major turned to minor and instantly the colour of the music behind his eyes changed, faded, turned washed out and pale. His fingers descended the claviature, leaving the bright, translucent realm of sounds of the upper keyboard and entered the cavernous netherworld of the deep, vibrating bass tones. His fingers slowed down. Each note was now a hesitant step in an eerie netherworld, each movement of his finger triggered another soul-shaking note the went straight to the marrow of his bones. The steps became faster, changing from a hesitant walk to the violent beat of war drums, relentless, loud and unbearable, like a marching army. His right hand flew up and there was a shower of blinding high notes, like the singing of sword being drawn and steel meeting steel. Like two waves rolling towards each other the music built on the opposite ends of the keyboard, louder and louder and more pleading, more threatening, racing toward each other, both of his hands moving toward the middle, dissonant, screaming, until the tension was almost unbearable and the melody begged to be released in a fountain of final harmony—

Maglor gritted his teeth. They were hurting as if he'd heard nails drawn down over a chalkboard. He __wanted__ the resolution, but that was not how it sounded in his head. He threw a short glance at Caranthir, who was sitting on a second piano stool, his brows knitted and his eyes looking at nothing in this world. Turgon was leaning onto the piano with his eyes closed and although he tried to hide it Maglor knew the music was hurting him as much as it was tearing at his own insides.

He made his decision in a matter of split seconds.

With great effort, he wrenched his fingers away from the beaten path and instead of releasing the cacophony into a final tritone, he slowly unravelled the tangled skein of hostile notes into a dominant seventh, which grated slightly, but ultimately faded out with the first and third note staying longer than the others, then took the other notes out in ones and twos, and released the last chord into a wistful four-three-suspension.

His fingers ran a rapid arpeggio passage from the middle of the keyboard up until the notes turned high and ethereal and he ended with the trill of a singing sparrow taking flight.

Maglor leaned forward, his weight resting on four fingers for a few breathless moments, then he slumped back and withdrew his hands from the keyboard to rest them in his lap. He sat utterly still. For a few moments, neither of the three boys moved.

It took another few minutes before Turgon finally regained his voice. "Holy Valar."

Maglor stared at the keys. He felt strangely detached, as he always did when he tried to find his way back out of the realm of music and back into the real, living world.

Turgon walked around and stared at the keyboard as if he was expecting a magical contraption that explained what he had just heard. When he did not find anything, he raised his eyes to stare at Maglor. "You composed that?"

Maglor nodded slowly.

Turgon looked at the piano again. "That's insane. I mean … I mean I __saw__ what you were playing. I saw the sky and the sun and then the caverns and the battle and..." Turgon made a vague gesture with his hands. "That's unbelievable. You got a grip on music that's worthy of a __Maia__."

Before Maglor could say "Thank you", Caranthir rose and walked over to them, running his fingers along the polished wood of the piano.

"I did not hear that piece before," Caranthir said. As usual, his voice didn't betray what he was thinking. It was neither enthusiastic nor disdainful nor particularly impressed.

"I haven't played it before," Maglor replied.

"You mean you played that just … you thought of that while you were playing it?" Turgon's eyes were wide.

"Yes. No. I mean, it's a variation of something I have been writing for a long time," Maglor said. "The framework's the same, but the in-between is different, you see?"

"Fairly light-hearted for your standards," Caranthir remarked.

Maglor flinched slightly at those words. "I guess."

He could see Turgon's eyes stray to the three big piles of sheet music that were covered in his narrow, pointy hand. __Elegy of__ _ _the Light__ , __Obituary No. III, A Gallery of Thunderstorms, Danse macabre__ and __Requiem for Almaren__ were lying there and Maglor could see Turgon's eyes catch on the titles and then, of course, his gaze flickered over to Maglor with poorly concealed worry.

Maglor met his gaze stubbornly. Turgon seemed to notice the implications of his weighty look and cleared his throat. "Anyway," he said. "That's amazing. Has your father ever heard this one?"

Maglor's face darkened. "No. And I don't think I'll show him. He's never been very happy if I asked him to listen to me playing. He does not like music. He does not like anything much, except his work."

Turgon frowned. Then he shrugged. "I honestly don't get that, but that's his loss." He scratched his head. "Boy, I wish I could play half as well as you do. Fingon once said I'm so bad I could probably play a dissonance with one key alone and, er, he may not be wrong." He leaned over Maglor's shoulder. "Still, I that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to be able to play."

Caranthir rested his elbows on the open piano case and stared pensively at the strings that were strung on the heavy metal frame inside the case, then at Maglor until his eyes came to rest on Turgon.

"You __are__ able to keep a rhythm, right?" he said with the tone of an editor who was asking a scribe applicant whether he knew how to spell.

"I may not be able to play the piano, but I'm not dumb," Turgon said sharply.

"In this case we may be able to do it together," Caranthir mused, flat out ignoring his cousin's indignation. "Kano, come over here where I am standing."

"Why?" asked Maglor.

"Because you can play the harp and I can't."

Maglor did not really understand what Caranthir was getting at, but he got up nevertheless and walked over to the side of the piano where the lid stood open, held up by an artful wooden joint of polished wood and brass, revealing the intricate inside of the piano with strings, the padded hammers underneath, bridge and soundboard.

"Good." Caranthir rounded the piano with long strides and took Maglor's seat on the piano stool. "Turgon, you stand behind the piano. The part where the lid is closed. Yes, right there."

Turgon assumed his position, resting his hands on the polished wood and throwing Caranthir a questioning glance. "And now?"

"Now we play."

" _ _Huh?__ "

Caranthir rolled his eyes. "I am reconsidering whether I should believe you when you say you're not dumb. We play the piano. Together. Obviously."

Maglor couldn't help but look puzzled as well. When Caranthir noticed this, his shoulders slumped. "Seriously, do you both have anything in your heads at all? I mean besides sheet music and," he made a dismissive wave in Turgon's direction, "your static engineering __je ne sais quoi."__

Turgon looked at Maglor. "Jenny says what?"

Maglor shrugged helplessly.

Caranthir groaned. "Forget it. We are playing together, at the same time. Turgon, you set the rhythm. Percussionwise, everything is yours. Use the lid, use the sides of the corpus, whatever. Keep it simple, don't rush, don't lose the beat. And don't punch through the wood, the piano was expensive." He turned to Maglor. "You're the man for the strings. You can pluck them, dampen them, however you like. You'll play the second part, and I'll avoid the notes you're using, because I will be playing the first part on the actual keyboard."

"Wait." Turgon straightened. "We're making three instruments out of one?"

"Exactly that."

"That's genius," Turgon blurted out.

Caranthir gave him a thin-lipped smile. "We are extraordinary, I believe I told you so."

Maglor felt the tension ramp up immediately and he hurried to intervene before they broke out in their next squabble. "So, what do you want to play?"

Both boys pondered this. "Something light-hearted?" Turgon suggested.

"More like something easy for the new boy," Caranthir threw in.

" _ _Cats in the Cradle__?" Maglor proposed.

"I said 'light-hearted'," Turgon groaned.

"No, it's fine," Caranthir cut in. "It's a children's song. Everyone knows it, it's easy to remember and the rhythm is simple enough even our dear cousin should be able to pull it off without a hitch."

"Fine," Turgon said.

"Fine," Caranthir shot back, then glanced between both of them. "Ready? Okay, I'm counting in. One-two-three-four."

And they did it. Maglor was surprised, because while the piece wasn't very difficult it was one thing to play it alone, but another thing entirely to play it with three people on one instrument, trying not to get in each others way and keeping to the same beat. This was exactly why he usually preferred to practise solo instrumental pieces than asking his brothers to join in. Every single one of them would inevitably want to take the lead over the others and the few times they had tried it, it had always ended in chaos.

Turgon however was content with being assigned the rhythmic section and honestly, he wasn't half bad at it, Maglor himself was fine playing the subtler background sounds by plucking the strings on which Caranthir in turn built his first part with the actual piano solo.

The rhythm and the two melodies interwove and then split in three when Maglor began to independently play an improvisation with his left hand. Turgon looked up, impressed, and even Caranthir gave him a brief smile before he went back to his keys.

They finished the song with only a few errors and then looked at each other.

"We work well together, don't we?" Turgon asked.

"Seems like it." Caranthir smirked.

Maglor looked between them and then he grinned. He used to keep close to Maedhros and the twins, because Curufin and Caranthir seemed too disagreeable to get along with, and he had been drawing his feeling of self-worth and recognition from his distant father alone, firmly believing that once he lived up to his father's standards and elicit praise from __him__ , he would have finally done something that was truly remarkable.

To his surprise, he found it didn't matter to him that it was Turgon who had praised him and that it was him and Caranthir whom he now felt a strange camaraderie with. Their odd little trio had formed out of the blue, but Maglor thought that this was much better than chasing elusive shadows, wishing to belong where he was not wanted and living on praise that was never given. Maybe he had been going about this all wrong. Maybe he had been looking for company in all the wrong places. Maybe he would never get his original wish, but there were other possibilities. This was fine. This he could live with.

"Another one?" he asked.

* * *

Celegorm did not pay attention to where he was running. His mind was fully occupied with conjuring up curses down upon everyone in his family that would have made Melkor cower. Branches and twigs where whipping his face and he batted at them, slapping them out of his way, and then all of a sudden a girl slammed into him. For three very confusing seconds, the stars and sky and trees were all whirling below, above and around him, and then he landed on his back. The force of impact punched his breath punched of his lungs for the first time when he hit the ground and then a second time a split second later when the girl landed on top of him.

Celegorm let out a stifled groan and opened his eyes only to come face to face with his cousin Galadriel who was already righting herself up.

"Are you quite all right?" she asked, a crease of worry between her brows.

"Am I—are you mad?" he bit out between pained puffs of breath, sitting up. "Can't you watch where you are going?"

"I did, actually. I knew we'd run into each other. I did not account for both of us needing to slow down, though. I am sorry." She stood and offered him her hand.

Grudgingly, Celegorm took it and allowed her to pull him to his feet. "Where were you anyway?" he asked, his tone miffed. "We've been looking for you all over."

"I looked into your pond," Galadriel said.

Celegorm waited for her to continue, but she did obviously deem the answer self-explanatory. "And?" he prompted.

"And I did not see Huan," Galadriel added.

"Well, I would've been surprised if you'd found him in the pond," Celegorm said. "He's a dog, not a turtle."

Galadriel narrowed her eyes marginally which made her look very reproachful and a little bit scary. "I was being serious."

"Well, so was I," Celegorm said. "He's not a turtle. And he doesn't really like water."

Galadriel blew a strand of her out of her face with a desperate face. "I should explain myself better. I can see a lot of things in the water. The future, for example. Or if I want to know where I put a book I've been reading and I'm not able to find, I just need a pitcher and a bowl of water and if I look hard enough, I can see where it is."

Celegorm blinked. "I'm not sure I'm following. You look into a bowl and you see stuff you've misplaced and are able to find it again."

"...yes, basically. The bottom line is if something exists in the world I can see it in the water."

Celegorm frowned, mulled the sentence over in his head once, twice, then the fog of ignorance was pulled away from his mind and the implication of what Galadriel had said opened up before him like a bottomless pit. He paled. "No—are you saying that Huan—" Celegorm stiffened.

"If Huan was dead, I would see him." Galadriel said, obviously untouched by the horrifying spectre which had just risen on the horizon in Celegorm's mind, something he had never thought of before, a concept that was so foreign, so eldritch, so cruel, so unlike something that should be able to exist in the __Undying__ Lands, it made the marrow freeze in his bones. "Or at least I think so. But the fact remains that I cannot see him. It means he is gone."

"If he isn't dead, he can't be gone. I mean, where would he go? He has to go __somewhere__!" Celegorm gesticulated wildly.

"I don't know. This is what has me stumped as well." Galadriel frowned and scratched her nose. "The thing is I don't recall something like that happening ever. Usually there are at least hints and traces which can lead you to what you are looking for, but there is nothing of Huan which tells me where he could be at. I was wondering who to ask, because I don't think this is something we can do alone and I don't think our parents could help us either, so that leaves—"

"—exactly no one," Celegorm finished. He slumped against the nearest tree, the warmth draining from his hands and feet and shivers starting to run down his spine. He tried to think, tried to come up with a clever plan, but his head was dreadfully empty. But there was also an emptiness in his chest he felt now that he was no longer occupied with running and being angry. It was a spot right where his heart was and it felt hollowed out, wounded and for some reason he knew that the thread that had always tied him to Huan ever since he'd first met him had been severed. He felt awful, his legs were trembling; it was as if someone had just yanked his soul out of his chest and torn off one half. Huan was gone, his shaggy, big, smart, wonderful dog; Huan who had been gifted by him by Oromë himself, the only Vala Celegorm remotely liked—at least as much as one could like an eldritch, mostly shapeless creature which was not really a person, but only the manifestation of a concept in the world. What would Oromë say if Celegorm told him he had lost his dearest friend who had been gifted to him by the god of the woods and the hunt? What indeed?

The idea occurred to both children in the same moment. Galadriel's eyes widened, but Celegorm was faster. He snatched her wrist and pulled her after him. "Come," he said, "quickly! He'll know. He'll help us, I know he will!"

"Where are we going?" Galadriel shouted against the air whistling in both of their ears as Celegorm pulled them both along between the trees that darted past them.

Celegorm turned his head around and grinned. "I thought you could see the future, cousin?"

"Even my water cannot see what's going on inside of blockheads!" Galadriel retorted.

"You are just too proud to admit that you're not the all-knowing wisecrack you want to be," Celegorm shot back.

"I believe you wanted to tell me where we were going!"

"I believe you are trying to change the topic!"

"Celegorm!" Galadriel squeezed his fingers. Tightly. Very tightly.

"Ouch!" he yelped. "Fine, fine! Don't break my fingers! We're going to Oromë's shrine!"

"You have a shrine for Oromë?" Galadriel stopped dead and the force of arrested movement almost yanked him backwards onto the ground. Celegorm caught himself stumbling and turned around, still holding her hand.

Galadriel was eyeing him with an expression full of wonder. "I thought you Fëanorians didn't get along at all with the Valar."

"Kindly stop defining us all by the opinions of our father, would you?" Celegorm said, his tone a bit sharper than he had intended.

Galadriel was silent for a moment. "Sorry. I did not know you were so __faithful__ to the gods. That still doesn't explain the shrine, though."

"Well, as you see there are situations where it can come in handy to have a god on short call." He smirked.

Galadriel knitted her eyebrows and a few moments passed in silence. At last she shrugged. "Well. Yes. I can't argue against that."

"Good. Ready to go on?" He jerked his head in the direction where the shrine was hidden.

Galadriel nodded. "Ready."

Both children started running again without another word. They forged on until they reached the edge of the gardens. The bushes and trees grew thickly here and there was barely any light coming in through the canopy of leaves and branches overhead.

It felt like standing in a real forest, which was why Celegorm preferred it to every other spot in the garden. Here, hidden away where no curious eyes would find it was a stone stele, cracked and grown over with moss. It looked older and old, truly __ancient__ , as if it had been put here in Tirion long, long before the Elves had set foot on it. It had once belonged to the wood that had covered the hilltop of Tirion, but the stonemasons who had built the palace had either not seen it when they had raised the walls, or they had seen it and had wisely been afraid to move it. And now it was standing in a forgotten corner of the gardens, hidden behind a belt of wild-growing trees, bushes and ungroomed grass, and Celegorm had often wondered if nobody else ventured here because they had forgotten about this place or the stone itself was keeping them away.

A strange inscription ran down its front side, foreign, alien letters that were jagged and not at all like the smooth, flowing Tengwar his father had introduced as the standard script. The letters themselves were glowing slightly in an emerald green sheen. The air around the stone was humming with power.

"This wasn't made by Elves," Galadriel said.

"No," Celegorm said quietly.

"I have never seen something like that before." She gingerly ran a hand down the stone and then there was an electric crackle and she jerked her hand back as if the stone had burned her.

"It's all right," Celegorm said, squeezing her hand briefly before letting it go again. "Okay. I am going to call the god. It's important you're silent and do nothing to disrupt it. Best sit on the tree root over there."

Galadriel eyed him questioningly, but she obeyed and took a seat on a gnarled old root of an oak which arched almost a foot over the ground.

Celegorm took a deep breath, steeled himself and then broke off a branch of holly which grew on both sides of the stele and placed it in a crack on the stone. Then he went down on his knees, placed his palm on the cold face of the stone and closed his eyes. He was afraid. One did not call lightly on one of the Valar. They were extremely powerful and as erratic as a thunderstorm. In a way they were like simplified people, missing all the complex parts and shades of grey. They were either good or evil, completely calm or destructively angry. There did not seem to be much of an in-between with them. But what they all had in common that there was not a single one of them who liked to be disturbed in vain. He just hoped his cause was valid enough for Oromë to hear him out. He took a long breath in, then exhaled.

"Oromë," he started and his voice was jittering on the last syllable, but when he continued his voice grew firmer and stronger with every word, "Lord of the Woods, Head of the Great Hunt, Who First Showed Us The Stars, I beseech you to hear me out. One of your children, Tyelkormo Turcafinwë, pleads for another, Huan, who has been lost and no eyes on this world can find him again. Rashly I sent him away with only his well-being in mind, but Huan left no trace and not even my cousin Galadriel, noble daughter of Arafinwë the Far-Seeing, can find him. We need your eyes all-seeing, your ears all-hearing, your wisdom that is boundless to help us in our plight. Hear me out, Master Of All That is Wild and Untameable, for your child Huan is gone and needs you as much as he ever needed you. In the name of the stars uncountable beneath which you found us, in the name of the contract that was struck between us at Lake Evendim, in the name of myself as who I am by true name and soul and being, I beg you to hear me out."

The humming in the air grew stronger and the strange signs under his hand began to glow so brightly the skin between his fingers grew translucent and green. Celegorm tried to pull his hand away, but found he could not.

 _ _I hear you.__

The voice made his teeth chatter and his skull rattle and it echoed between the trees and when Galadriel gasped Celegorm knew she had heard it as well.

 _ _Turn around so I may look at you.__

Celegorm felt numb, but he turned around as if guided by a greater will, his hand still on the stone. Suddenly, the world below the trees was flooded with silver light and for a moment he was blinded. Galadriel and he shielded their eyes and when they lowered their arms, they could see the creature that was standing between the tree trunks.

Its features were blurred by the bright light that emanated from it like from the heart of a diamond that was filled to the brim with light, like looking at a sun up close. And yet both children could see a few things, and they both stumbled back.

The creature was three times the height of an elf, magnificent and splendid and utterly foreign. Its antlered head, face and long neck belonged to a stag and from the shoulders on its body flowed into the form of a mountain lion, long and sleek and ended in wolf's paws. Folded on its sides where great feathered wings, brown and silver and a long tail flicked around its hind legs.

 _ _You called__ , Oromë said, __and I have come__. He stepped closer soundlessly, rising like a tower, no, like a mountain above him. __Tell me, what has happened to Huan?__

* * *

Curufin raced through gardens. He did not pay any attentions to the shouts of Finrod and Aredhel which quickly faded behind him, he did not heed he bushes and thorns which were whipping his face and ankles and tearing at his shirt. He could barely see where he was going because everything was so blurred, but he forged on relentlessly until he reached the wall that surrounded the gardens and drew the border between the palace proper and the woods that were rising beyond and up the hill until the hills turned into the slopes of the Pelóri.

He was breathing hard and leaning onto the wall, trying to sort through the jumble of his thoughts and thinking of what to do next. He really, really wanted to climb over the wall and run away. Maybe Father would be worried. Maybe he should engineer it so that something horrible was to happen to him and then everyone would go looking for him and when they did not find him they'd __regret__ ever having treated him wrongly.

Stupid Finrod. Stupid Aredhel. They knew nothing, they were __no one__ and yet they acted as if they were better than him, smarter them him and now they had forced him to run away in __his own home.__ Out of sheer frustration he punched a tree trunk and then screamed when pain lanced up his wrist like lightning. He cursed and kicked the tree again which earned him nothing more than a sprained toe and more pain.

He was so furious he was not even sure anymore who it was he was angry at. His father and Nelyo and Kano and Aredhel and all the others became one in his mind, a confused mixture of faces and memories.

He tried to blink the tears away, but they just kept coming which only made him more furious.

"Stop it!" he screamed at no one in particular but boy did it feel good to scream, because there suddenly he felt like he was filled to the brim with bad, dark stuff that threatened to make his head burst and when he screamed it was not quite so bad and the pressure lessened ever so slightly and his headache was drowned out.

He slumped with his back against the wall, almost choking on his own fury and hatred at everyone and everything. Maybe he should do something stupid for real. Something really, really dangerous. That would show them all not to mess with him. Maybe father would be worried for once.

What if Curufin did not come back? Would Father be afraid? Would he look for him?

Unbidden, Finrod's earlier words came back to him.

" _ _Deep down you know that there's something else he should have been for you and you know how much he failed you. He probably doesn't even care about it, just like he doesn't care about anyone but himself."__

 _ _He's wrong,__ Curufin thought at the same time some reluctant part of him admitted that Finrod was right. He stood there, leaning against the wall while breath after shuddering breath rack through him. Something black and hateful unfurled in his stomach. No, Father would probably not notice if Curufin was gone. But there was something he cared about. And it just so happened that Curufin knew exactly what it was and how to take it away from his father.

Slowly, very deliberately he stood and wiped the tears off his face with his sleeve and then started to walk down the garden wall until he reached a narrow gate whose lock he had picked first when he'd been no more than five years old and had continued to do so whenever he felt like taking a stroll in the woods beyond the gardens. Mother never knew about it which was good because she'd no doubt have forbidden him to go there alone. Even in Aman where the watchful eyes of the Valar watched over almost everything, there were some places where nobody with half a brain would go without a sword, a good bargaining chip or a death wish.

Curufin did not have a weapon. He did not have money. He also and very notably did not have a death wish.

But he had a lockpick, a plan and a desire for revenge which clouded enough of his common sense that he did not even hesitate or look back over his shoulder when he steered his steps in the direction of the dwelling of Melkor.

* * *

 **Notes** : Uh-oh.


	4. The Rift

**Notes** : I'm sorry this took so long. Real life and writing my thesis got in the way of writing my fun stuff. On the other hand, when I wasn't doing research I had some time to read over what I'd written up to this point and edit it, as well as drastically cutting scenes that were too long/useless/didn't fit with the plot anymore. If you've been following the story up for some time and resume reading here in chapter 4, I suggest re-reading the first three chapters in order to get up to speed regarding the changes.

For everyone who's too lazy or too busy to re-read the beginning, here's the change log in a nutshell:

\- the toddlers have been cut from the story

\- the Maedhros/Fingon conversation on Chapter 3 has been completely overhauled and the romantic subtext has been removed entirely

\- various smaller revisions regarding dialogues and scenes between the kids in the garden to enhance conversational flow and plot progression

Also, first on-screen appearance of Melkor! Yeah!

* * *

 **IV. The Rift**

 _In which things fall apart_

* * *

Aredhel and Finrod got a glimpse of Curufin just when he was exiting the garden through a gate in the wall almost at a running pace. They followed him quietly into the forest and up a densely wooded hill, until Curufin climbed the ridge of a hill and vanished out of their sight.

Finrod and Aredhel accelerated their steps in unspoken agreement, but when they reached the top, Curufin was nowhere to be seen.

The land before took a steep drop into a hollow whose slopes were scattered with scree and gravel, which ended in a shoreline along a dark, flat surface. At first, Fingon thought they were simply looking at a still lake, but something about the sight made his skin crawl.

"Something's wrong with the water," he said.

"I don't think that's water," Aredhel said quietly. "For one, it ain't reflecting the sky."

Finrod looked closer. She was right. Where a normal lake might have mirrored the light of the stars above, this … un-lake was __pitch-black.__ It seemed to devour light, allowing not the tiniest glitter of brightness to escape.

Fingon swallowed around the lump in his throat. "You're right," he said, his voice almost steady, while his eyes were roving the landscape below them. "Something's not quite right about this place. I think we should go back and—Curufin!"

Too late. About twenty fathoms below them and quite a bit ahead given the slope of the crater, Curufin had just vanished into the darkness which parted as if to make way for him and then swallowed him whole. It seemed he had not heard them… then again, Finrod's voice hadn't carried as much as it used to do.

Before the terror that was slowly creeping up his throat was able to reach his head and freeze him where he stood, there was a flurry of hair and blue fabric next to him. After years of practise in reining in his younger siblings reaching out to grab Aredhel was almost an automatic response—otherwise he'd never have gotten a hold of her in time.

He yanked her back. "Are you mad?" he hissed. "You can't just run in there like that! We don't even know what's down there!"

"All the more reason to follow him!" Aredhel said heatedly.

"We can't—"

Aredhel looked up at him, her eyes blazing. "You can't back out now! Have you forgotten that it was you who's driven him off?"

Finrod actually stumbled a step backwards at those words. "That's not fair, Aredhel, you know he needed to hear that!"

"But still," Aredhel said. "We can't just leave him here!"

"I don't want to leave him," Finrod said. He bit his lower lip, looking at the eerie blackness below them. Guilt was already gnawing at his insides and he felt queasy only thinking about that he might be responsible for his younger cousin getting lost. "I just don't think it would be wise to jump head over heels into __this…__ whatever it is."

"Well, I'm not going back," Aredhel said and her tone was final.

For a moment, Finrod considered threatening her to throw her over his shoulder and carry her back whether she wanted or not. Everything inside him told him to do the prudent thing and tell a responsible adult, but… the thing was, leaving did not sit well with him either.

"How about we wait?" he suggested, his voice cracking. "And if he doesn't … if he isn't back in an hour we get help?"

Aredhel narrowed her eyes and gave him a look that could have scared off Uncle Fëanor himself, but then she nodded. She folded her dress under her and sat down on a boulder.

Finrod watched her and when he was sure she wouldn't simply dash off as soon as he sat down as well, he took a seat next to her, and their uneasy watch began.

The path was steep, but not impossibly so and winding ever downwards into the valley between the two outermost mountains of the Pelóri. He had left the wood behind long ago and Curufin was now climbing down a treacherous hollow whose slope of was made entirely of smashed stones and gravel that slipped and shifted under his feet with every step. The land here was barren and abandoned by all that lived, chased away by the sinister presence which permeated the ground, the stones and even the air.

* * *

Curufin was skidding downward at a running pace and even when he tried to slow down, he found he could not. It was as if the crater itself wanted to draw him in further and further. When he looked back, he could no longer see the path he had come and the walls of the hollow seemed to steep to climb upwards again. When he looked down, all he could see was darkness. Not darkness in the usual sense, the friendly, comforting blanket of the night, but __blackness__. Even the stars seemed dimmer around here. Curufin looked up and saw them twinkling weakly, their glory diminished and impossibly far away, as if a veil had been pulled between him and the real world.

The first signs of terror tried to work up their way through his throat, but he would not let them. It only served to make him angrier at himself and he set off again at a near-running pace. Gravel rushed around him like waves breaking on the sea shore. His feet moved faster and faster and he was approaching the point where he __knew__ that his legs would no longer be able to keep up with the speed he was gaining, until—

It felt like the exact opposite of climbing stairs at night and missing the last step. His left leg hit even ground where he'd expected empty air and his knee buckled. Curufin nearly tumbled forward and only regained his balance at the last possible moment. Panting, he righted himself, feeling the thin film of cold sweat on his arms and between his shoulder blades. He gasped for air, but there seemed to be so little of it here. He breathed and breathed, but his heart just would not slow down and his lungs just kept on pumping like that of a stranded fish. He refused to sit down, even though his legs were trembling. Chances were that he would never get up again if he did. So he pulled himself together, crossed his arms as if against the cold and stumbled on. He looked up again. The stars were gone. The sky was black and empty.

The bottom of the crater was filled with impenetrable darkness, safe for one thing: Ahead there was a narrow path cleared between the gravel and the remnants or moraines. It shimmered slightly before him, enticing and seductive. It was the only thing that stood out of the absolute blackness all around him, the only way to go. Carefully, Curufin stepped on it. The ground did not rise beneath his feet nor did one of Melkor's monsters appear. Curufin waited a bit longer, then he walked on, watching out for little stones and cracks in the ground. If he was going to do this, he wanted to go through with it without breaking his ankle.

The path meandered at the bottom of the hollow, sometimes twisting left, then right, then coming back to itself in a loop, then going in circles, but somehow __not__ coming back to itself, as if the one who had built it had done so without a fixed plan in mind, just taking there street where it struck his fancy at the time, with no regard for order and logic.(1) The topsy-turvyness and outrageous inefficiency of it thoroughly unnerved Curufin and he was almost glad when the mind-boggling path ended before a structure of black obsidian that could __almost__ have passed for the entrance of a dark version of a pillared temple, were it not for the same chaotic look of it all that grated at Curufin's eyes. There were torches burning in sconces around the building, enough to enable him to see properly. He blinked.

His eyes were __seeing__ something, but his brain simply declined to process the picture. It was unable to reconcile the building with anything that could exist in this world, while it was obviously and blatantly there right before his nose.(2) In his head, it __felt__ like the equivalent of nails dragging over chalkboard coupled with the aesthetics a life-sized Escher drawing. There were rows of columns circling the building and empty spaces between them which only __looked__ like empty space and at a second glance, the columns and the spaces between them had traded places.

Where fear had not sufficed, this impossible oddity was almost enough to drive Curufin off. Fear was something real and understandable, but this uncanny valley, which was teetering on the edge of what __looked__ real but wasn't, made his skin crawl. Curufin almost ran. Almost. But not quite. He was still angry and the place did nothing to soothe his temper. If anything, the dark feeling he had felt surging in his stomach had grown stronger and even more resentful since he had come here to the bottom of the valley. He clenched his fists and stepped forward.

There was a door that swung open outward and inward at the same time. Curufin manoeuvred around it, careful not to touch it and found himself in the strangest entrance hall he had ever seen. The floor was tiled in black and white like a chessboard. Doors were going off in every direction, and there were stairs which were going higher and lower at the same time. When he looked up he saw a roof that was tiled like the floor he was walking on, hanging at a vertigo-inducing height. At a second glance, he was no longer sure whether he was looking __up__ at all – or whether __he__ was in fact walking on the ceiling and the hall was opening up below him. There was some kind of gravity here, but no sense of direction – up, down, left, right – at all.

Mirrors were hanging from every wall, some small, some big, some round, some rectangular and far too few were showing what they were supposed to reflect. Instead, some were blank and dark like blind windows and in others he saw shadows moving with no one in the real world to cause the reflection. The air was so cold that his breath was coming in little clouds every time was exhaled. Everything seemed to exude an unnatural chill—the tiled floor, the high walls, the glass of the mirrors and the metal of their frames. Curufin crossed the hall with long strides, then stopped. He had the distinct feeling that every time he turned something started moving just out of his field of vision. Refusing to allow himself to be cowed, he stubbornly fixed a tall silver-rimmed mirror on the opposite end of the hall which reflected his own pale image back at him, small and lost in the huge hall of stairwells and doors around him. He was keeping an eye on it while he walked forward, until the sound of a slamming door made him whirl around.

The heavy black door through which he'd come in had fallen shut—in fact there was no sign that there had ever been a door. Instead there were mirrors upon mirrors clustered in the hallway behind him, their surfaces now blank and dark. Curufin craned his head to look up the stairwell whose walls had been lined with mirrors. Had. They were empty now. The mirrors had __moved,__ clustering in the entrance hallway, blocking the exit. Curufin shivered, trying to convince himself that they were not __sneaking up on him__. He took a step backwards and into the hall and froze when his back came in contact with a flat, icy surface that sent spikes of cold through his clothes, his skin and right to the marrow of his spine.

He whirled around and came face to face with the tall-silver rimmed mirror. It was no longer attached to the opposite wall of the entrance hall. It was standing in the middle of the hall on the chessboard tiles, standing upright without any visible support.

Curufin shrank back from it, staring at the blackness behind the mirror glass. Something seemed to be moving in there…

 _ _ELFLING. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE IN MY DOMINION?__

The voice had the sound of dangerous calm that hinted at something much, much worse that was yet to come, but it was enough to make his teeth chatter. Curufin had little doubt that if it became angry, the sound alone would be enough to rattle his bones to dust. Instinct took over and he wanted to flee, but there was nowhere to run. The hall had been brimming with doors moments before, but now there were only walls and while he had been staring at the big mirror, the smaller ones had formed a circle around him, cutting him off from every direction.

Curufin stared at the nebulous black shape in the mirror which didn't look like it was made of matter, but the __absence__ of it. Terror washing over him like an ice-cold waterfall, his heart racing, his hands sweating and the sweat was crystallising to __ice__ on his palms—

It was a fight or flight situation. Unfortunately, Curufin had never even considered being a "flight" person. Which was why in this moment his brain took the only alternative and did the next best thing short of short-circuiting.

It calmed down.

From one moment to the next, Curufin stopped shaking and the grimace of terror vanished from his face. "I have something I want to offer you," he said calmly. He stepped up to the mirror and craned his head to look up at where he reckoned the face of the shape must be (if it had a face to speak of at all).

 _ _WHAT COULD A HALF-GROWN STARGAZER POSSIBLY HAVE TO OFFER ME?__

This time, he did not flinch back from the voice. "Not just __some__ half-grown stargazer," Curufin replied, his voice growing firmer. "I am Curufin, Son of Fëanor, and I demand to talk to you."

The temperature in the entrance hall dropped right to the freezing point. Shades and wisps of darkness were coiling around the dark figure in the mirror like snakes rising from the ground and winding themselves up around its knees. The glass of the mirror was freezing over with ice where Curufin's breath hit it.

 _ _YOU ARE OVERSTEPPING YOUR BOUNDARIES, YOU LITTLE FOOL. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. GO, BEFORE I FORGET MYSELF AND I WRENCH OUT YOUR ENTRAILS OR TELL MY MIRRORS TO PULL YOU IN.__

The dark shape shifted and seemed to loom closer now, directly behind the glass. __TELL ME, BOY, HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN TRAPPED BETWEEN TWO MIRRORS AND IN THE INFINITY THAT OPENS UP BETWEEN THEM? I WONDER HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE YOU TO GO MAD IN THE MAZE OF NON-WORLDS THAT LIES BEHIND THE LOOKING-GLASS.__

"You wouldn't dare," Curufin retorted. "I know you're still on probation and that the other Valar are just waiting for the slightest excuse to be able to kick you out into the Void for good. Besides, you'd be pretty much shooting yourself in the foot if you did that."

 _ _WHY EXACTLY DO YOU BELIEVE THAT WOULD STAY MY HAND?__

Curufin smirked. "Because I know you don't want to risk that, especially since I have something you want."

 _ _AND THAT WOULD BE?__

Curufin rummaged around in the pocket of his trousers and at last produced a small, self-made lockpick and held it up of the massive shadow to see. "As it happens, we're both mad at my dad. And I happen to know which types of locks he uses on his workshop and how to pick them. And I can show you how to disable the traps."

The shadow regarded him for a moment, and then a very dangerous equilibrium Curufin had not even been aware of tipped to the safe side. The tension went out of the air all around him and it grew warmer. The ice on the mirror vanished.

 _ _YOU HAVE A CONVINCING WAY WITH WORDS, ELFLING.__

In the mirror, just behind the dark shape, torches flamed up, illuminating a comfortable sitting room with red armchairs and a fireplace and shedding warm orange light out into the cold hall.

The shadow stepped back. It looked smaller and less threatening now and it made an inviting gesture into the sitting room behind him.

 _ _PLEASE ENTER, CURUFIN, SON OF FËANOR. I THINK WE HAVE A LOT TO TALK ABOUT.__ Through the shapeless dark that formed its face, a broad smile appeared, revealing a lot of pointy teeth.

Curufin hesitated. He looked back over his shoulder. The mirrors had been crowding around him menacingly, but they had gone back to their places on the walls where they belonged, looking innocent and lifeless once more, content to reflect the actual stairwell now.

He took another look at the dark shape. The part inside of him that was still thinking straight was screaming to get away. He looked at the shadow of the Vala, the mirror, the armchairs. He looked at the lockpick clutched in his fist.

Curufin looked up again. The shadow was still grinning down at him. Its white teeth were the only thing visible in the darkness of its face, and there were decidedly too much of them showing in its smile. The smile might have been friendly and it might have been threatening, but it sure as anything was mocking, telling Curufin that the shadow did not believe that he would be brave enough to take it up on the invitation.

 _ _I'm gonna show you. You think you know me so well, but I'm gonna show you all and let's see who gets the last laugh out of this.__

Swallowing his fear and his misgivings for good, he took a deep breath, braced his arms against the frame and climbed into the mirror. He did not see the smile of the shadow stretching until it would have reached from ear to ear on a normal face.

* * *

 _(1) Including a passing nod to chaos theory and a raised middle finger to the laws of Euclidean geometry._

 _(2) Or, in other words, if the only colours existing in the world were in grey scale, this building would be orange._

* * *

There was a sensation as if he had just missed the last step on the stairs in the dark and Finrod jerked awake. He did not remember falling asleep and he looked around hastily. The night air was cool and pleasant, and the stars were twinkling above. Aredhel was still sitting next him him, thank the Valar. Her head was propped up on one hand and her eyes were closed. Finrod looked around, trying to pinpoint what was it that had woken him and found his answer when he saw a vague dark shape moving at the bottom of the valley.

At first he was not able to put a finger on what was wrong with that, until it occurred to him that he should not be able to see the bottom of the valley in the first place. And yet he could. The unnatural darkness was gone and revealed the gravelly, rocky slopes and basin of the crater at their feet.

The dark shape was blurred and undefined as if it was unable to decide which shape to take, but if there was one thing there was no doubt about, it was that it was coming closer to where they were sitting. And if Finrod could see it, it was probably able to see them.

Without taking his eyes of the shadow which was slowly sliding forward over the rocks Finrod reached over and shook Aredhel's shoulder.

"Aredhel. Wake up. __Wake up!"__

"Hm?" Her dress rustled when she straightened. "What's up—who is that?"

"Duck!" Finrod pulled her down behind a boulder next to him. Aredhel landed on her stomach with a pained "Oof" and Finrod clamped his hand over her mouth.

"Quiet," he hissed and then slowly peeked around the boulder. "I think we both know who this is," Finrod said, staring at the shadow which was slowly starting to float up the slope with an enticing swaying motion. "Damn, I didn't know he lives here."

A tremor ran through Aredhel. "You mean that – d'you… do you think Curufin knew?"

Finrod's eyes were still glued to the shadowy form that was slowly but surely making its way out of the ravine. His heart was beating against his ribs like a hammer. "I'm almost sure of that."

"But …" Aredhel hesitated, her eyes wide as she turned to peek around the boulder and then look down into the crater again. "But where is he __now__?"

Finrod followed her gaze. True enough, Melkor had now reached the very edge of the ravine and vanished behind the ridge of the hill, but Curufin was nowhere to be seen.

"We have to go," Finrod said. "Quick. Something's not right here." They both climbed to their feet, slowly and careful not to make any noise. He reached for Aredhel's arm, but he only grasped empty air. His head whipped around, but the only thing he still saw was Aredhel's flying dark hair and a cloud of dust as she skidded and stumbled down into the valley.

Finrod almost shouted her name, but stopped himself at the last possible moment when he remembered that Melkor was __right behind__ the ridge two hundred steps above him and to his left and that he most decidedly did not want to draw attention to himself and his cousin.

 _ _Oh gracious Valar. What do I do now?__ Finrod stood frozen to the spot, unable to decide what to do. The smart thing to do would be to turn around and tell a responsible adult about this immediately – but – the thing was – he didn't have time for it. Not to mention that the qualifier "responsible" was bound to be a problem. He bit his lip. There were a great many thoughts racing through his head at the moment, none of which were particularly helpful. First and foremost were a few choice cusswords he was reasonably sure a Noldorin prince shouldn't even know in the first place.

Okay. He couldn't decide what to do, maybe he could decide what __not__ to do.

Fine. So. He could not let his younger cousin run head over heels right into Melkor's domain which most likely had swallowed up Curufin already. So he, as the responsible older cousin had to –

Finrod opened his mouth and out came the most heartfelt "Oh __crap!"__ of his life. He was just glad his mother wasn't around to hear it.

"Curufin, I'm going to kill you," he ground out between gritted teeth and then he was stumbling and skidding after Aredhel, down into the valley of Melkor.

* * *

If anyone had asked Galadriel how she'd feel about riding on the back of a Vala, __horrified__ would probably not have been the first thing to come to her mind. And yet she stood rooted to the spot when Oromë knelt down before them and lowered his mighty head, so they might climb onto his long neck.

It did not help that she had in no way been able to foresee this. The waters of the future had become as muddied as a dirty puddle ever since Huan had vanished and with her ability to See missing, she felt as blind as a mole. How others could bear to stumble through life so sightlessly and cluelessly was a mystery to her.

Obviously, though, cluelessness did not always go hand in hand with dithering, as Celegorm was already swinging one leg over Oromë's neck and cautiously took hold of the fine silvery mane which ran down the length from Oromë's antlers to his shoulders. The Vala endured it serenely, but when she did not move for another few moments, Oromë gave her a look that was outwardly calm, but seemed to pierce the insides of her skull with needles that were not hot enough to __hurt,__ but definitely unpleasant enough to be a warning.

 _ _Come child,__ Oromë said. __I am not a beast of burden to be called and kept waiting, and then carry you wherever you please.__

Galadriel swallowed around the lump in her throat and then approached the crouching Vala with hesitant, cautious steps. Although Oromë had lowered his head nearly to ground level, his neck was still at a height with her shoulders. She grabbed a fistful of his mane, almost expecting him to jolt or rear up under her touch, but the Vala kept still until she had – with a bit of assistance from Celegorm – straddled his neck and taken a seat behind her cousin.

Celegorm seemed to be remarkably unfazed by the prospect of ridinga Vala. His face was grim, but not so much out of fear than out of determination. Everything else aside, he seemed remarkably at ease around a being who could probably unmake them and obliterate the entirety of Aman with little more than a stray __thought.__

She clasped her hands around Celegorm's chest and yet she almost fell off when Oromë suddenly righted himself up to his full height. There was a nauseating feeling of her stomach dropping two stories while the rest of her was catapulted __upwards__ and then she suddenly found herself at a height with the high branches of the trees all around them. She looked down and although she was usually not bothered by heights, she almost regretted it. The floor suddenly looked very, very far away.

 _ _What did you see in your visions of Huan, young Noldë?__ Oromë's voice in her head jerked her out of her uneasy thoughts. Galadriel righted herself up and thought long and hard.

"A path. A twisted path made of pale fire," she said. "An eight-pointed star. And a gate. The path stopped there and beyond there was only darkness."

"Eight-pointed stars are the insignia of my father," Celegorm said. "And the pale fire probably refers to the Silmarils. I have no idea about the gate, though."

 _ _I see.__ Oromë seemed to weigh Celegorm's words, inclining his antlered head slowly from one side to the other. __Paths and light are common enough in visions, but gates are dangerous things to see. They are openings in otherwise impenetrable walls, fragile points in tightly woven nets, passages from one side to another. They herald change, instability and points of no return. On the other side awaits the Great Unknown and you cannot estimate what you might find if you pass through it … or what might enter from beyond. I have felt a disturbance ever since I have come here.__

Displeasure rippled through the Vala like water after a stone had been thrown on the calm surface of a dark lake. Galadriel shivered involuntarily, but Celegorm did either not notice or did a splendid job of hiding it if Oromë's mood affected him.

"Do you think the gate might lead us to Huan?" he asked.

 _ _Possibly.__ A shiver ran through Galadriel and she had to stop and think why, until it came to her that it were plenty of reasons to be unsettled if there was something even Oromë the Vala did __not know__.

"Can you track down the disturbance?" Celegorm leaned sideways to look into Oromë's left eye.

 _ _Yes.__

"Will you—"

 _ _Hold on tightly,__ was all the Vala said and Galadriel barely had enough time to tighten her grasp on Celegorm when Oromë suddenly __leapt.__ The leap carried them over the walls enclosing the palace garden of Tirion and suddenly the treetops were ten feet __below__ them, like a vast, grey sea. Nothing but the sky was around them and above, an endless black ocean strewn with twinkling shards of diamond.

Galadriel braced herself for the impact of the landing on the cobbled street running along the outside of the walls, but Oromë might have been treading on air instead of stone for she hardly noticed the landing at all.

The Vala bounded down the hillside of Tirion in long, leaps, as quickly as a horse and as silently as a cat. In mere moments, they reached the foothills and dove into the alleys between the houses. Lampions and the stars above were the only things brightening the night. But although this was more than enough light for the Eldar to see and although a lot of them liked to wander around at night, gazing at the stars, no one noticed them when they brushed past them so closely that Galadriel might have reached out to them had she been any closer to the ground.

She felt like a wind spirit, crossing empty plazas with quietly gurgling fountains in a heartbeat, flying down the marble stairs leading up and down the city of Tirion – until they suddenly came to halt in front of a ducked, squat building she did not immediately recognise.

Celegorm on the other hand sucked in a sharp breath when he saw the building.

"Dad's forge," he exclaimed. "Huan must be in there!"

"That's impossible. How would he have gotten in?" Galadriel asked. "The door is locked!"

But Celegorm was already climbing off Oromë's back and using one of his silver wings to move closer to the ground hand over hand until all that remained was a six-foot-drop. Celegorm let go and then almost stumbled over his own legs in his hurry to reach the door. He grabbed the doorknob and rattled on it with all his his strength. The door did not budge an inch.

"Valar dammit!" he shouted and pounded his fist against the wood, then froze and craned his head around to look at Oromë. "Er. Sorry."

The god did not grace him with an answer. In fact, the Vala did not even seem to have taken notice of the insult. Oromë lowered his head and Galadriel hurriedly grabbed his mane to avoid tumbling forward and off his neck.

 _ _Stand aside.__

Celegorm hurriedly scrambled out of the way. Oromë's aura was radiating and flaring around him like fire, and he was growing less and less calm by the second. The Vala cautiously brought his head nearer to the door opening.

There was a strange humming and crackling in the air. Galadriel belatedly realised that Oromë was in fact talking to the door – no, he was __Speaking__ to the very nature of the door; and then the wood – there was no better way to put it – __dissolved__ into a curtain of glittering fog, which Oromë dispelled with an imperious movement of his head.

 _ _So much for keeping out a Vala with a simple wooden door,__ Galadriel thought, then narrowed her eyes to look through the door opening.

The inside of the workshop was pitch-black. Galadriel did not know whether the Valar were subject to the same physical restraints as the Eldar while they were wearing an actual shape, but the way Oromë inclined his head to the left and the right in a puzzled way strongly suggested that he wasn't seeing any more than Celegorm or her.

Oromë tried to stick his head inside the door opening, but just when his muzzle was about to cross the threshold, he jerked back as if he'd been hit by a shock of electricity and reared up so suddenly that Galadriel was almost thrown off. Her grip on his mane became white-knuckled and she clung to Oromë's neck with all the strength she could muster as the Vala took a few staggering steps back and then shook himself. Arcs of lightning and static were crackling around him. Galadriel felt her hair rise, but for whatever reason, the static did nothing to hurt her, even while Oromë was flinching and twitching, his muscles contracting uncontrollably.

Celegorm stared at Oromë, and he seemed to have forgotten how to close his mouth. "Oh bloody hell, I completely forgot about the traps," he said at last. "Dad has installed something that is supposed to keep the Valar, er, Melkor out of his workshop, but …" Celegorm fell silent, a look of stricken guilt on his face.

This made Galadriel feel a bit foolish for having assumed that her uncle would be naive enough rely solely on a wooden door to keep his creations secret not only from his own kin, but from the Valar themselves.

Oromë did not regale Celegorm's apology with an answer, but just waited motionlessly, his entire being cramping under Galadriel, until the pain let up and he righted himself again.

 _ _There is something inside,__ he said.

Galadriel had a sinking feeling that the Vala was not talking about the worktables of her uncle.

"What? Huan?" Celegorm asked.

 _ _Something is hindering me from seeing beyond the threshold. I cannot see it from out here and I cannot enter to find out, but something is in there.__

"I could go in and take a look," Celegorm offered, but was cut off by a sharp __No!__ of the Vala that felt like the vicious pound of a migraine in full action against the insides of their skulls. __It is dangerous.__

"I'm an elf. The wards won't hurt me," Celegorm said, rubbing his temple with a grimace.

 _ _I am not talking about the wards.__

"You mean – there is something else in there?" Galadriel asked.

 _ _Yes and no. There is something in there. A presence and an absence at the same time. A vacuum. There is … a pull.__ Oromë took a few steps backwards and now Galadriel could feel it too. There __was__ a pull in the air, as if something of giant proportions was lurking in the darkness, drawing in a light, but inexorable, never-ending breath. If the events up until now had not been enough to make her feel afraid, __this__ did.

Oromë looked at Celegorm, who was still standing near the wall, a few paces away from the yawning black opening. __Step away from the house immediately.__

Celegorm turned around, his face pale. "What about Huan? I have to at least __look__ whether he's inside there! He could be in danger!"

Oromë's voice sounded like ancient trees being hit by lightning. _ _Do not cross the threshold. Do not step inside.__

"But – "

 _ _DO NOT CROSS THE THRESHOLD. DO NOT STEP INSIDE.__

This time, it sounded like a mountain being split right next to her ears. The words knocked the wind out of Galadriel and she slumped forward on Oromë's neck, a cry of pain stuck halfway down her throat. When she looked up again, she was seeing everything through a blurry veil. She wiped her sleeve over her eyes and blinked.

Oromë was still looking at Celegorm who looked like his knees were ready to give out.

 _ _We must find your father. Quickly. Under no circumstances can anyone enter the forge now.__

Celegorm did not offer any objections.

Oromë said a few words in the earth-shaking language of the Valar and the door rematerialised, then he lowered his head again. __Climb on my neck, quick!__ _ _We must find your father!__

Celegorm hurried to obey. Galadriel helped him pull himself up and as soon as they were seated, the Vala bounded up the steps and terraces they had come down, heading back for the palace at the hilltop of Tirion.

* * *

Curufin felt strangely light-headed when they left Melkor's dwelling and climbed back out of the ravine. The entire situation was veiled in dream-like haze; everything seemed to happen in slow motion and there was an unreal quality to their surroundings wherever Curufin looked. The stars had vanished, leaving the sky an empty dome of pure darkness; the edges everything around them – stones, slops, trees – were soft and lined with a faint glittering edge. Melkor was walking – or wafting, more like – to his right, his presence as cold and as stinging like an iceberg pressed up directly to Curufin's side. The Vala was wearing a shape that was vaguely similar to the Eldar, except for the fact that he seemed to be unable to permanently settle on __one__ appearance, which was unnerving to say the least. His entire shape was flaring, undulating, changing, blurring and rearranging itself without pause. For a while it fascinated Curufin to watch the kaleidoscopic changes in height, features, number of limbs and the shadow that Melkor seemed to use as clothing. Eventually, however, the changes happened too fast for him to track, and dissolved into chaos. Curufin felt a headache coming on, signalling once again that he was perceiving something beyond the capacity of his brain to comprehend, and he avoided looking at the Vala while they climbed out of the crater.

At the top of the hill they gave the palace a wide berth, but their detour ultimately proved to be unnecessary. They encountered no one on their way from the hilltop down to the forge. The streets lay abandoned, the gardens, which were usually filled with merry laughter and the sound of harps and lutes, were silent. No one was one the roads, and the windows of the houses around them were dark. Not even the lampstones on their bronze posts were shedding their warm light onto the white-cobbled streets below. No nocturnal birds were singing.

But there was something else that was strange about Tirion this evening. Curufin looked around, trying to find out what it was that was bothering him, but he couldn't pinpoint it. Everything looked like it always did. There was the music hall, the marble fountain, the arboretum…

He tried to work it out, but every time he was about to grasp just __what__ it was that was bothering him so, the revelation slipped from him. He tried to concentrate harder, but as it was, he was way too preoccupied with the fact that he was about to break into his father's workshop with __Melkor__ of all people. He felt guilt rising like bile in his throat, but then he thought of how Father had left them, time and time again, for his stupid inventions and he squashed the feeling with the ferocity of slamming the heel of his boot down on a disgusting insect.

The presence of the Vala was weighing down on him like a mountain and he felt oddly compelled to say something – anything, if only to dispel the unnatural silence that had settled like a shroud over Tirion. On the other hand, he really did not want to talk to Melkor of all beings and the icy presence of the god made the words freeze and die in his head before they even had a chance to reach his tongue.

Curufin reached a street crossing and turned right into the street where his father's forge was. He walked down a few steps into a dark street before he noticed Melkor wasn't following. Confused, he turned around.

Melkor was standing in the middle of the crossroads. He stood there like a tall dark pillar with wisps and clouds of darkness spiralling around him. There was no light source he could discern, but somehow Melkor was throwing even darker shadows in different directions as if he was being lit by invisible lamps from all sides. His shadows spiralled out, in one moment like pointers on a compass, in the next they were shifting, rotating, contorting and dissolving. The only thing visible were two cold blue points of light where his eyes must be.

 _ _WRONG TURN, CURUFINWË.__

Curufin stared at him. "No, the workshop is down there." He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder.

 _ _LOOK AGAIN.__

Curufin turned around and – Melkor was right. His father's forge was a solitary building at the dead end of a narrow, straight street. But the street before him curved away to the right, climbing back up the hill again – wait.

He turned around again, back to Melkor. Behind the dark god, a straight street ran away, ending in a dead end.

Curufin blinked and gripped his head. He felt a bit dizzy, as if the world had suddenly tilted on its axis without warning. "No, wait. I __know__ this. We go down the hill and then we take a __right__ turn. I am __sure__ of this."

 _ _WELL, YOU CAN BE CERTAIN OF A GREAT DEAL OF THINGS, HOWEVER REALITY ITSELF SEEMS TO INSIST YOU ARE WRONG.__

Curufin shook his head. "I've walked this way almost every day for __years__. It cannot be."

 _ _WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST THEN? THAT YOU ARE RIGHT AND REALITY IS FAULTY__ __? THAT IS THE MOST DESPICABLY FËANORIAN THING I HAVE EVER HEARD.__

Curufin opened his mouth to protest, but the words died on his tongue.

This was __wrong__. This made no sense. But Melkor was __right__. But how – how could he – why did he remember doing it differently all those years? A little voice inside his head insisted that he could not be wrong, that he could not possibly have missed this his entire life – but – he was seeing it, it was a __left__ turn, not a right turn – he must have remembered something wrong, remembered it wrong for his entire life – there was no other explanation –

He looked up. The blue lights were fixed on him. They were searing, almost white-blue, drawing him in. Curufin made step after stumbling step closer until he was standing directly in front of the dark god, craning his head back to look up at him. The two needlepoints of ice-blue light, eerily reminiscent of dying binary stars, were staring down at him.

"It was a right turn," he said, but his voice was wavering.

 _ _NO. IT NEVER WAS.__

Curufin felt like he was __slipping__. He wished for something to hold on to, but there was only this strangely empty city, this __wrong__ street crossing and Melkor. He felt very alone all of sudden.

 _ _COME.__

Curufin could not remember willing his feet to move, but he found himself following after Melkor, trailing in the wake of wisps of darkness which came loose from the maelstrom surrounding the Vala whenever he moved. Space and light itself seemed to distort around Melkor as he walked, flitting around him in strange curved trajectories.

A short way down the street Curufin had never taken, they came to a halt in front of Fëanor's workshop. Curufin stared at it, opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him once again.

 _ _THE LOCKS.__

Curufin stepped forward, feeling slightly dazed. He inserted the lockpick and worked it around in the keyhole, carefully feeling for the slight click when the pins lodged themselves into place and allowed him to turn the cylinder of the lock. Five – six – seven. There.

Even though he was nervous with Melkor standing right next to him and watching him, disabling the locks was child's play. His fingers did not even seem to need his brain in order to know how to move. Curufin knew that his father had installed the locks primarily to discourage some of the more curious younger Noldor from snooping around in his workshop, but since Elves in general weren't heavily inclined towards theft or breaking-and-entering, this security measure was more of a formality than an actual defence. The actual defence against the only being he actually wanted to secure the forge against was invisible.

Curufin was almost sure his father did not know that heknew about the wards, let alone how to conjure them up and disable them. There had been countless days which Curufin had spent carefully slinking around his father's legs while Fëanor had been working, paying barely more attention to his son than to an alley cat.

The only things he'd ever said every now and then had been, "Don't touch this" or "Be careful not to drop it". He had probably assumed that Curufin's interest in his workings had been the superficial fascination a child had with strange and glittering objects. That Curufin might have been __listening__ and __learning__ while sitting on a workbench motionlessly hour after hour had apparently never occurred to him – because Fëanor had never been paying attention.

Curufin clenched his teeth so firmly his jaw hurt. He lifted his hands and hissed the counter-incantations under his breath. His words hooked into the fine weave of protection his father had laid down, until the magic surrounding the forge was a mesh that consisted in equal parts of Curufin's words and those of his father. The counter-incantation threaded through the mesh like a snake until it they were intertwined tightly enough to make it impossible to separate them without damaging the ward – which was fine with Curufin.

He spoke a last hissing syllable and the weave of his father's wards was ripped and torn to shreds. An eerie blue shimmer ran briefly around the contours of the forge, casting everything in a cold light, then it dimmed and the darkness returned.

Curufin stepped back. His heart was hammering in his chest and there was a lump in his throat, but he did not allow himself to doubt his actions. He forced himself to think, __I did it and this was right. Father deserves this.__

The darkness around Melkor's feet rippled and rose like excited snakes. The blue pinpricks of his pupils seemed to grow brighter, illuminating something that __was not a face, not a face at all—__ and all of a sudden he realised just what he was looking at.

It was like gazing up at the stars and becoming aware how far they really were away, how big everything out there was and how small and insignificant you were in the face of it. It was a truth so vast that you could only ever hold on to it for the briefest of times before your mind recoiled from its vastness and dropped it like a hot coal, lest it be damaged beyond repair.

There were some things that were too big for the mind to grasp, and it was a reflex of pure self-defence that Curufin had forgotten them almost immediately. But he had not forgotten the implications and the terror at what he had glimpsed had made his anger at his father evaporate, much like an asteroid impact would vaporise the seas itself instantly.

Melkor reached out to grasp the door handle and nothing happened. No electric arc throwing him back, no flashes, no lightning of spells lashing out to fend off an intruder – just a regular door handle.

"I should go," he said and he took a few steps back, his eyes glued to the black fingers, which slowly but surely tightened their grip around the handle. Melkor halted and then those eerie cold eyes turned with excruciating slowness, and finally landed on Curufin.

 _ _IS THAT SO?__ Melkor asked. _ _WELL THEN, ALLOW ME TO COMPENSATE__ _ _YOU FOR YOUR TROUBLES WITH A GIFT, LITTLE TRAITOR.__ Melkor made a swift movement with one wrist and something glittering came flying toward Curufin who caught it reflexively. He opened his hand and saw his own pale face staring back at him from a hand mirror.

 _ _BE ON YOUR WAY, ELFLING! YOU'RE FREE TO WALK AWAY ANY TIME YOU WANT – IF YOU CAN, THAT IS.__

Curufin stared at the mirror uncomprehendingly. He saw his face, half of it illuminated by the warm sheen of a lampstone, and the star-strewn sky rising above him.

Wait, __what?__

Curufin looked around. The lampstone was dark and the sky was empty. There was no light and there were no stars. He looked back in the mirror: Warm light on the left half of his face. The stars above him.

And then the coin dropped. What bit of blood was left in Curufin's face left it entirely. His eyes widened. The mirror shattered on the cobblestones next to his feet. He turned around an ran, down the dark street, around the next corner, past houses with black windows, up the stairs to the higher levels of the city, just __away away away__ from it all, as far as he could get.

But Melkor's hoarse laughter hounded him, following right on his heels, ringing in his ears, and echoing in the dark, empty city around him.

* * *

Much to Maedhros' surprise, they found no one when they came back to the palace. Merely from the music room soft sounds came forth. Maglor was obviously practising the piano again.

They headed up the winged staircase to the first floor, following the melody. Maedhros knocked and then pushed the door open.

Maglor, Turgon and Caranthir, who were all gathered around the grand piano as if in some strange kind of ritual, looked up at him. The music stopped immediately.

"Hey," Maedhros said.

"Hey," Maglor replied slowly, and pulled his hands away from the keys as if he didn't want his brother to see what he'd been playing.

Maedhros chose to ignore Maglor's secretive behaviour. "You know where the others are?"

"No."

"They're not with you?"

"Well, obviously not," Caranthir cut in, leaning onto the piano. "Or wait, let me check –" He made a great show of lifting the lid of the piano even higher and looking underneath. "Nope, not under here; well that's a surprise." He closed the lid again and threw Maedhros a disdainful look.

If Maedhros had held some kind of ball or a heavy book, he would have thrown it at Caranthir's head. Caranthir wasn't just annoying like Curufin was from time to time. If there were professional levels to being a pest, Curufin at his worst was a lowly casual compared to Caranthir on his best behaviour.

"Very funny. Do you have any idea where they might be?" Fingon cut in.

"We haven't seen them ever since they went to look for Galadriel," Turgon said.

They were interrupted by the sound of the front doors slamming shut and three voices down from the entrance hall.

"Dad's back," Maglor said. His gaze flitted to Maedhros' and his lips were pressed into a tight line.

From below, he heard their father calling for them. He was using their full names, a universal sign of trouble brewing on the horizon.

"I don't really want to talk to him now," Maglor said, drawing his shoulders up a bit.

"Me neither," Maedhros admitted.

"This is the first place he'll come looking, at least for me," Maglor said, shifting uncomfortably on his seat. "And there's no lock on this door either."

"Well, we could go somewhere else," Fingon suggested.

"And where?" Maedhros asked. "I'm kind of fed up with tree-houses for now."

Finrod raised an eyebrow. "Is there anything wrong with your room?"

"No, I guess not," Maedhros said and in the next moment wished he had said yes. He was tired and he actually wasn't too keen on having his brothers and his cousins setting up camp in his bedroom tonight.

"Except if you want us gone –"

"No, no. It's fine." Maedhros had caught Maglor's pleading glance and no matter what Fingon had told him about responsibilities, he would not be the one in the family to leave his brothers hanging high and dry when they needed him.

"Well, let's go there then," Fingon said. "It's been __ages__ since I last was here anyway."

So the five of them set off on the walk down hallways and long corridors, which were softly lit by lampstones. The walls themselves were hung with huge paintings showing stars and lakes which somehow seemed to reflect the light of the stones and cast out a dim light onto floor and ceiling themselves. Statues Nerdanel had chiselled were lining the carpets on both sides.

They climbed another staircase and after that it didn't take them very long to reach the west wing where Maedhros had his bedroom. They stopped in front of the door and Maedhros gave Maglor an encouraging nod. "Go ahead, you have your hands free."

Maglor stepped forward, turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. One after the other, the boys filed inside.

Maedhros' room was almost exactly like Fingon remembered it: spacious, warm and kept mostly in reds and golds. It was a wide, comfortable room with draped curtains, soft carpets and high bookshelves caught in the strange in-between-stage of adolescence: old toys were crammed up high on shelves between books on Quenya grammar and Eldarin history, an old worn plush lion was wedged between two pillows on the bed, squashed and greyed with age, and flimsy comic books and illustrated pamphlets were scattered over the desk, where they were competing for space with scrolls on sword fighting techniques. Self-drawn instructional posters with military tactics were pinned to the walls next to the slightly yellowed, scraggly drawing of an orange animal with five legs and a thin tail which was captioned in bold, determined and very wonky letters which said CAT CAT CAT FOR MEDROS FRO MAGLOR. The beddings were made, but just with the least amount of precision any mother would let their child get away with.

This wasn't a room of spoiled royalty where you only walked in with a silver tray and a stiff upper lip. It a place you came to in order to sink hours of free time into your hobbies, or laze around on the bed and get lost in daydreams while looking at the patterns on the painted ceiling. Next to a full length-mirror on the wall, there even was the mysterious chair in the far corner of the room, which existed everywhere, in every world, in every teenagers' bedroom where the various assorted pieces of clothing the owner had not yet found the time to put away into wardrobes were piling up.

All in all the room was a motley of inviting chaos, and the boys took up the invitation and threw themselves on any comfortable surface available. They sat slouched in armchairs and on the sofa, knees drawn up and empty expressions on their faces, but there was a tension in the room that was almost palpable. Maedhros was now lying stretched out on the duvet of his bed, staring up at the red-and-golden canopy overhead. He had his hands crossed behind his head, trying to appear relaxed, but Fingon knew that Maedhros and his brothers alike were just waiting for the sound of steps coming to a halt on the other side of the door and his father demanding they come out and talk to him.

Over the course of the evening, Maedhros had gotten more and more withdrawn and sullen. Fingon knew that his cousin was doing his best to pretend like Fingon's words earlier hadn't gotten under his skin, but Fingon knew him better than that. In all likeliness Maedhros was playing out Fëanor's selfishness in his head again and again, and it darkened his mood further by the minute.

In turn, Fëanor was probably annoyed that the children had disobeyed the order to stay within earshot and put him through the trouble of having to search for his kids. However, Maedhros didn't give the impression of wanting to give in tonight. If Father wanted to see his kids, he would have to work for it. Threats got Fëanor a long way according to Fingon's father, but they wouldn't get him through a massive door of polished wood unless someone let him.

Their reprieve lasted until the first knock came. Maedhros sat bolt upright. Fingon had just so managed to suppress a flinch. He looked around and saw that the other boys had straightened in their seats as well.

"Maitimo, are you in there?"

Maedhros was silent. Fingon threw him a questioning look and raised his eyebrows, making a __go-ahead__ motion with his chin. Maedhros shook his head and returned to stare at the door. There was the sound of the doorknob being tried on the other side.

"Maitimo, I know you're in there, otherwise the door would not be locked," Fëanor said. "Are your brothers with you?"

Maglor shifted in his seat and even Caranthir, who was always so bent on appearing cool and aloof, looked tense. Fingon and Turgon exchanged long glances.

"Open up, I need to talk to you."

Maedhros slowly righted himself up, his fingers crumpling the duvet. "No."

There was a long pause on the other side of the door.

"What did you say?" Fëanor asked slowly.

"I said 'No'," Maedhros said, his voice wavering just slightly. He forced himself to let go of the duvet and stood, as if he was getting ready to charge – or bolt. Fingon had no idea. It was not as if there was anywhere to run. "No, I won't open the door and I don't want to talk to you now."

"You are angry."

"Yes, I am. I don't want to see you right now."

There was another very long pause. Fingon could picture his uncle prowling up and down on the other side of the door. He wondered whether his son's words had managed to hurt the great Fëanor at last.

But when Fëanor spoke, his tone was calm and unaffected. "Look, I understand that you are angry and I am … sorry. This is one thing which needs talking about, I agree. But I want to do it face to face, not through a door. You will have your apology, but we will do this the proper way: dignified, calm and seated at a table. I am your father, not some servant and I will not be kept waiting outside the door." The air of impatience about Fëanor was almost palpable.

"I said no," Maedhros replied. He put the flat of his hand against the table as if to brace himself against the door should Fëanor suddenly decide to ram it in. "Later."

" _ _Now__ ," Fëanor said. "This matter is too important to be delayed."

Maedhros made to answer, but he wasn't quick enough.

"Of course, a matter is immediately important when your Silmarils are involved! So important that you seek your own sons out, even! But guess what, we could not care less about you and your stupid jewellery!"

All boys turned to Maglor who was as white as a sheet and had his hands balled to fists at this sides. The outburst must have surprised them all, because for a few long moments no one on both sides of the door uttered a word.

"Maglor, I – I apologise," Fëanor said and every word sounded like he was forcing them out through gritted teeth. "The thing is – I was looking for you all over, I searched for you everywhere and I was very, very worried—"

"Oh __what now?__ " Maglor shouted and crossed the room with a few long steps. "You were __worried?__ You looked for us? Like, what, once in your lifetime? Why, thank you __Dad__ , do you want us to give you a bloody __award__ for this?" And with that he gave the door a kick that was so violent something in the hinges splintered.

Fingon stared at Maglor, slack-jawed. Kind, quiet Maglor— _ _what the hell?__

"You didn't care for anything we wanted those past years, why should we jump at every command of yours?" Maglor shouted. There were tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and he was favouring his left leg as he stepped back.

"Because I am still your father and you will obey—"

"Oh, __now__ you're playing the father card! Way to live a convenient life, and only acknowledge you have sons whenever it's convenient!"

Silence.

Long silence.

"I will not to be talked to like that by my children," Fëanor said at last. His voice sounded more strained now, all trace of ruefulness and softness were gone. _"_ Open the door. That is an order."

"You wish," Maglor said.

"Maglor, you should stop—" Turgon said softly.

" _ _Don't tell me what to do."__ Maglor turned around. His eyes were red-rimmed and dull. "You have no idea what this is about. Stay out of this."

"I'm just saying—" Turgon said helplessly, but Caranthir silenced him with a sharp gesture.

Fingon stepped up to Maedhros. "Don't escalate it," he hissed. "He sounds really angry."

"Good." Maedhros threw him a side glance. "Then maybe he finally understands what it is like to be us for once."

"Russa, you pig-headed idiot. For once, listen to me," Fingon said. "You're pushing it. Open the door and talk it out."

"But then Father __wins__ again. And he will be right and we will be wrong and everything will go back to what it was before," Maglor said.

"I don't think so," Fingon said. "If you'd just listen to him, then maybe—"

Suddenly, something slammed into the door from the other side. All boys jumped and stared at the door.

"We __will__ talk," Fëanor said. "Whether you want it or not, and I will not allow myself to be locked out of any room in __my__ home by my children. I will be back." And then the footsteps retreated.

All the boys stared at the door.

"Let no one tell you that you are better than your father," Turgon said. "Because I think you've just one-upped him in terms of escalating a situation from molehill to mountain."

No one deigned to answer the statement. Maglor limped to Maedhros' bed and flopped down on the edge, holding his right foot. "We messed up, didn't we?" he whispered after a few moments. All the rage had gone out of him as suddenly as it had come.

Maedhros followed slowly and knelt down in front of him, helping Maglor pull the shoe from his foot. "I think we did," he admitted quietly.

"I'm afraid," Maglor said. "I wish we could just get out of here and avoid him until he calms down."

"Are you saying you need an emergency exit?"

At the sound of the voice the boys jerked their heads around and stared at the shadowy figure standing where the full-length mirror was hanging from the wall in a darker corner of Maedhros' room.

Fingon narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the face in the semi-darkness. When he finally recognised the person, his mouth dropped open in disbelief. Fingon __knew__ the person over there, but he could not be here, because there was no way someone could get into a locked room two stories above ground level.

The others seemed to think something along the same lines.

"Curufin?" Caranthir blurted out, his icy countenance lost for once. "How the hell did you get in here?"

Curufin moved, shifting his stance slightly, shadows sliding over him like water. There was something oddly flat about his movements and there was a glimmer in the shadow where his eyes had to be. He grinned.

"I got in the way all of you will be getting out," he said. "You wouldn't believe what I found over here."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Caranthir asked. There was a vague noise of someone talking on the other side of the door, but the boys ignored it. Their eyes were fixed on Curufin.

Curufin's smile stretched even further. "It's __awesome.__ You have to see it for yourselves." He stretched out his hand. "Come, I'll show you."

* * *

"Fëanor!" Fingolfin shouted at his brother's back, trying to keep up with him. "You stubborn idiot! Listen to me, just this once!"

"I did my share of listening tonight and it wasn't very fruitful, thank you very much," Fëanor said. He crossed his bedroom and ripped open an unassuming door behind which a cabinet was hiding. He started rummaging through the shelves until he came up with a keyring that must have held spare keys to half the doors in the castle.

Fingolfin was only slightly relieved. He'd half-expected Fëanor to resurface with a crowbar in hand. Frankly, he wouldn't have been all that surprised if he had. Fëanor seemed just the type to keep a crowbar in a cabinet in his bedroom.

When his elder brother tried to walk past him, Fingolfin threw his entire weight against him. "Stop," he ground out between clenched teeth, but Fëanor shouldered him aside without so much as looking at him.

"Get out of my way."

Fingolfin grabbed his sleeve. "Fëanor, you blasted stubborn __mule__! Don't you see that you are going about this in a completely wrong way?"

And to think that he had started out so well—but why was it that with Fëanor, nervousness translated to anger and indignation instead of humility and reflection? Fingolfin wasn't one to throw the towel before the last round, but even he noticed he was approaching the event horizon of despair.

"You were doing so well in the beginning, why did you have to lose your sorry excuse for patience just when it was most important?" he asked.

Fëanor looked up and gave him a withering glare. "I tried to apologise, but they did not accept."

"Well, accepting the apology of one's own free will is kind of the point of forgiveness—"

"And they were __disrespecting__ me. I do not tolerate disrespect."

Fingolfin hurried to keep up as Fëanor was marching down the corridor with long strides. "Your children are angry! You're disrespectful when you're angry as well! Do I really need to remind you of the incident in the throne room? You drew a __weapon__ on me and you did not apologise for it to this very day! You beat your sons hands down at impudence, and yet you want to hold your very own flaws over them like that?"

"Yes."

Fingolfin stopped dead. __Seriously?__ He quickly caught himself and hurried after him. "Fëanor, for crying out loud!"

But his brother was not to be deterred. He marched down the corridor, the keyring gripped tightly in his fist.

Finarfin had stayed behind and tried to talk the boys into opening the door, but had obviously been unsuccessful so far. He looked up when Fingolfin and Fëanor came storming down the corridor. "I tried to convince them to open up, but they kept ignoring me—Fëanor, what are doing?"

Fëanor pushed him aside and flipped through the keys on the ring until the found the right one for the door. "I am going to have the very thorough father-son-talk we so desperately need, and I'm not going to let a door and juvenile obstinacy get in my way."

"You really should not corner them like that," Finarfin said. "They'll come to you in their own time."

Fëanor whirled around. "You were the one telling me I was running out of time and now you want me to __wait__? Wait for what? Until my sons are grown and they can freely ignore me for the rest of their lives if they choose so?" There was something to Fëanor's voice that Fingolfin had never thought he'd ever hear – something that was rawer and more grating than just anger. Fear? Desperation?

Finarfin opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again.

"Thought so," Fëanor said and turned back to the door. "It's for their own good. They'll see it in hindsight."

Fingolfin and Finarfin shared a helpless glance.

Fëanor seemed to have forgotten about them completely. With a fixed stare, he fiddled around the keyhole with a lockpick until he managed to get some leverage on the key that was blocking the keyhole from the inside. There was no reaction coming form the boys. At last, the key fell to the floor of Maedhros' room with a dull __thump__ on the other side of the door _ _.__.

Fëanor put the lockpick into the pocket of his vest and inserted the spare key. He turned it. The lock clicked open. Fëanor reached for the doorknob, turned it, and pushed.

* * *

Oromë halted in front of the palace upon Tirion. Celegorm and Galadriel slid off his back and made for the entrance doors. Celegorm marched ahead, but stopped when Galadriel made a pained noise just behind him. Celegorm turned around and saw her doubled over, pressing her fingers to her temples.

He grabbed her by the shoulders. "What's up?" he demanded, an ugly lump of panic rising up his throat.

She didn't answer immediately. "I'm not – sure. There was a … shift."

There was a deep hum in the air. Celegorm looked up and saw that Oromë was craning his antlered head around as well.

 _ _Yes. I've felt it, too.__

"What kind of shift?" Celegorm frowned.

 _ _Different realities grinding against each other. Tectonic plate movements of worlds… one being drawn under, the other trying to push it down.__ Oromë turned his head and looked around.

Celegorm threw Galadriel a helpless look, but she shrugged it off, trying to right herself up again.

 _ _Something has happened at the forge. We must make haste, young Noldor,__ Oromë said and there was something strange in his voice – nervousness, fear? __We must find your father. I think the gate is open.__

"Gate? What kind of gate?" Celegorm was losing his patience, and quickly. He looked between Galadriel and Oromë, each of which seemed to be caught up in their own strange visions. "Will anybody explain to me what this is all about?"

Galadriel threw him an annoyed look. "The thing in the forge," she said sharply. "Something has happened to it. It feels like … a wound in the world. I can't __explain!__ " she said in an exasperated tone when Celegorm opened his mouth to ask a question. "All I know is that something is in there and that it is __bad__! And –"

She interrupted herself, and her eyes became empty, her hand raised halfway to her forehead. She just stood there frozen.

"Artanis?" Celegorm stepped up and snapped his fingers in front of her eyes.

"They're gone," Galadriel whispered.

" _ _Will you please stop talking like a damned book of riddles?"__ Celegorm snarled. "Who is gone?"

Galadriel's eyes slowly regained their focus and drew away from whatever she had been seeing to the real world around them. When she looked at Celegorm, her eyes were wide with shock.

"Your brothers. They're all gone."

* * *

The door opened without the slightest resistance under Fëanor's hands. Warm candle-light greeted them, but the flickering flame was the only thing that moved over the the walls, rumpled bedsheets and the shelves.

The room was empty.

* * *

 **Notes** : _This got way darker than I planned. I promise there's more humour coming up in the future. Also, don't worry if parts of this seemed a bit confusing. Everything will be cleared up in the next chapter._


End file.
